


Nothing Beautiful About the Wreckage

by AngelSelene



Series: Wreckage [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, But Ed is in denial, Canon-Typical Violence, Criminal Minds divergent from S9, Ed joins the BAU, Edward Elric Keeps Automail, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Fix-it for S12E2, Found Family, M/M, Morgan doesn't leave, POV Outsider, Post FMA:B, Using the CoS alternate world plot device and nothing else from it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:28:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26477992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelSelene/pseuds/AngelSelene
Summary: Ed doesn’t exactly start outintendingto hide his relationship with Roy from the rest of the BAU—it just kind of happens.The one in which Ed and Roy were dragged into the Criminal Minds world and are trying to make the best of it, but their secrets can't stay hidden forever.
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid, Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/William LaMontagne Jr.
Series: Wreckage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924888
Comments: 422
Kudos: 1093
Collections: 3am Fics Stealing My Sleep, Ashes' Library, Clever Crossovers & Fantastic Fusions, Well Written Well Composed Well Loved





	1. The First Not-Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Series and work title inspired by Nikita Gill's "Wreckage"  
>  _There is nothing beautiful about the wreckage of a human being..._

Ed doesn’t exactly start out _intending_ to hide his relationship with Roy from the rest of the BAU—it just kind of happens. Just like he just kind of happened to attend a guest lecture where Dave Rossi spoke about criminal psychology and behavioral science. Just like he _happened_ to catch Rossi’s attention after the lecture when he told Rossi that they should go back and check missing persons from the next county over, because they might have caught the guy, but he had victims long before he hit the cops’ radar and to check with the Mennonite communities. Rossi had given him a strange look, taken Ed’s name, and Ed had gone on his merry way because this college thing, where you could take as many classes as you wanted and just _learn stuff_ all the time? It was fucking amazing. And there was so much to learn in this strange, alchemy-less world.

When Rossi showed back up on campus a few months later looking for him and with a potential job offer when he graduated, Ed wasn’t interested. He’d spent enough years hunting down psychos, he didn’t need to do it again. Besides, what Rossi was offering was government work, and while the forged backgrounds Ed and Roy had managed to cobble together held up well enough to get Ed into college and Roy an administrative role on Ed’s campus, Ed was under no illusions that it would stand under more thorough scrutiny.

This world is just so… _connected_. It honestly creeps Ed out at times and makes him want to go wholly off the grid. His background as the kid of paranoid off-the-grid, anti-technology parents excuses most of Ed’s odd knowledge gaps. Roy had flounced in and acted like he simply preferred older ways, and of course, 90% of everyone swooned and bought it. Roy was taking classes to allow him to teach after they both decided that the military was not the way to go in this world.

Still, Rossi was insistent. Ed took his card and his information and filed them away, not intending to do anything else with them.

But the idea had taken root. Not that he wasn’t still working on a way to get him and Roy back to Amestris, but Ed had really hit dead ends. Everything he could find was less hypothetical than pure speculation, and none of it jived with the Truth-cursed knowledge in Ed’s brain. Really, they just weren’t even _close_. Ed was certain he had his alchemy back after coming to this world, but this world had _no useable alchemy_ , which, honestly, stumped even Ed.

So five years after he and Roy had arrived, two more years after meeting Rossi, Ed had a half dozen degrees under his belt, job offers coming at him from left, right, and center, and no fucking idea what to do with any of it until he remembered Rossi’s offer.

Roy had finished his own program, so he could officially teach if he wanted to, and five years of basically living in the same place with minimal travel had Ed’s wanderlust acting up like a bitch. He and Roy tried to travel whenever they could, but it’s mostly long weekends because even though Ed’s got scholarships coming out of his ears, they both feel more comfortable with them _both_ working. And it’s not like Ed doesn’t have a ton of experience tracking down and dealing with psychos. The ones the BAU deal with don’t even have alchemy.

He calls Rossi and asks about the position, the requirements. He expresses his concerns about his patchy background. Rossi pretty much says they’ll find a way to work around it.

And they did. It relocates Ed and Roy to Virginia, but that’s okay. Roy gets a job teaching community college science courses at first, moving to a local high school a year later. He is both better at it than Ed would have expected, and enjoys more than Ed thinks _either_ of them expected. In all of the time it takes Ed and Roy to make the decision to move and Ed to accept the job offer, somehow, it never occurs to Ed to tell Rossi about Roy.

It wasn’t intentional, exactly, but they’re very aware of how their world would have looked on their relationship, and that was with the bulletproof fact of Ed being a legal adult by virtue of his status as a State Alchemist. People wouldn’t have _liked_ it, but that had more to do with the fact Ed was Roy’s subordinate than because of his age. If he was old enough to kill people and be killed, he was old enough, in the military’s eyes, to be having sex.

They don’t have that defense here, and even though Ed is twenty-two before he joins the BAU, and well beyond anyone’s ability to complain about how old his lover is, it only takes him a few days to realize that this group will psychoanalyze the hell out of his relationship. The unwritten rule of not profiling one another notwithstanding, they are going to look Ed, realize Roy has _fourteen years on him,_ and figure out pretty quickly that their relationship started when Ed was—to them—unacceptably young.

So, he just… doesn’t talk about Roy. It’s not that hard, really, just another of the thousand things about his life that he can’t allude to in any way, shape, or form. Hotch knows that Roy is listed as Ed’s next-of-kin because he has access to his file, but Ed’s not the only one who doesn’t talk about his family a lot, so he probably assumes they’re not close.

It goes on for two years before Morgan catches him in a sour mood—it’s the anniversary, and this is one day a year that makes him willing to give up both arms and legs if it would give him his brother and his world back—and Morgan has recently taken to teasing him about needing a relationship. Ed took the day off last year—the sixth year they’d been in this world—clinging to Roy as the only touchstone he had. This year, they had an emergency serial child killer pop up two days before it, and Ed hadn’t been able to make himself stay behind. Not with a child killer out there. The kids always get to him because every failure reminds him of Nina.

Something about those cases makes all of the knowledge in his head seem to come together and spit out solutions and clues that he shouldn’t have. After two years, the team kind of takes it in stride, but Ed sometimes wonder if this isn’t Truth trying to balance the scales a little bit. In this case, so close to the anniversary, the clues and answers unfold in Ed’s mind like a perfect array. In the end, they save three kids, and they’re on a plane back to Virginia in the evening of the anniversary.

He knows that Morgan is trying to distract both himself and Ed. Once they showed up, no more kids died, so this is considered a win in the BAU’s book. But Ed’s head is filled with Nina’s sad eyes, her warped voice saying “It hurts, big brother” is tangled with memories of the monstrous thing he created instead of his mother and the images of the dead children they hadn’t been able to save. 

Morgan’s forced cheer and teasing is an unwelcome interruption. “Isn’t it about time we find someone for you, Ed? Someone for you to come home to.” he asks, plopping himself down in the seat across from Ed. It’s not the first time he’s said something along the same lines to Ed recently, it just hits a nerve today that it wouldn’t normally hit. Maybe it’s the day, maybe it’s because Morgan seems less teasing and more sincere this time. Whatever it is, it makes Ed snarl back.

“Pretty sure my partner would have an issue with you setting me up with someone.”

Morgan stares at him, shocked, and Ed can tell that he suddenly has the attention of the rest of the team. He sighs.

“You’re… seeing someone?” JJ asks, cautious and less intrusive, but still annoying. “You hadn’t mentioned it.”

Fuck. This is exactly why he hadn’t mentioned it. It isn’t any of their business anyway.

“Partner, huh?” Rossi asks, leaning over a seat to look at Ed. “How long has this been going on exactly? It couldn’t go back to why you didn’t want help moving, could it?”

Sometimes, it’s really fucking annoying working with profilers.

“More than two years?” JJ looks hurt, and fuck, Ed is useless against emotional women. “It’s not because…”

“It’s not because he’s a guy,” Ed says sighing, already over this.

“It’s because he’s so much older than you are,” Hotch says. Of course he would figure out that his next-of-kin is his partner.

Morgan sits up, alert and looking almost alarmed. “How much—”

“Fucking hell,” Ed interrupts. “He’s fourteen years older than I am,” he admits, because Hotch can and probably _will_ look it up later if he doesn’t tell them now.

“Ed…” Morgan starts, his serious and concerned face on, and Ed is not even a little in the mood to listen to how the _one good thing_ in his life is bad for him.

“Just stop,” he says, and his voice is cold in a way he hasn’t heard it in a long time. Even dealing with absolute scum he would happily beat to death with a wooden spoon, he knows this cold edge as the same one he got when defending Al, when condescending to people who thought they could play god. He knows it’s not one they’ve heard from him, because no matter how depraved and terrible people can be in this world, they don’t have alchemy; they can’t play god and unmake people. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to deal with this.”

No one stupid gets into the BAU, so he’s sure they’re all going to figure out that he and Roy have been together for a while just based on how defensive he is of it. If he had just started dating someone fourteen years older than he is, it might get some raised eyebrows but probably not much commentary. The only reason he would be defensive about it is if the relationship has been going on long enough to do more than raise eyebrows, and they are all smart enough to know that.

Again, it sometimes really sucks working with smart people.

He can practically _feel_ them all trading looks over his head, and it’s annoying as fuck when all he wants to do is go home and sink into Roy.

Because everyone knows he’s got a weak spot for JJ—JJ who is a beautiful young mother, who has two boys, who is blonde and blue-eyed and so earnest it reminds him of Winry—she’s the one who says, “I think we’d like to meet him.”

She’s not asking, not really. Anyone who has a significant other pretty much has been introduced to the team at this point, except Ed keeping Roy out of it. He knows Roy would like to meet the team that Ed spends so much of his time with, but Ed is, justifiably, concerned about how they will react to Roy. They’ll profile him—they won’t be able to help it. Ed doesn’t know what they’ll see when they see him and Roy interacting, because Ed knows that he’s very different with them than he is with Roy. With them, he has to hide all his broken, jagged pieces. He has never had to with Roy. Roy has known his greatest sins and his deepest shames from the beginning.

Everyone is looking at him expectantly, and he knows he’s not getting out of this one unless he’s willing to quit over it, and even then, that doesn’t guarantee the team showing up at their doorstep. 

“Whatever,” he says. It’s been a long few days, it’s the anniversary, and he just doesn’t fucking have the energy to fight a losing battle right now. “Not when we get home. Maybe next weekend, or whatever.”

“We can have a barbeque at my place,” Morgan offers, and Ed knows he’s trying to be kind, but barbecuing tends to be a no-go for Roy, and Ed shakes his head.

There’s no winning scenario here, because Ed doesn’t want them in his home or around Roy, but he wants him and Roy to be outside their own environment even less. “I’ll cook or have it catered or something.” They have a decent-sized yard, so at least it won’t be too many people crammed in.

“We can do potluck?” JJ offers.

“Sure,” Ed says, just wanting this conversation over with. “Whatever.” He pointedly pulls out his phone and opens to the academic journals he’s subscribed to. “If you don’t mind.” He flicks his eyes up to them, and they slowly subside back to their own seats.

“Ed…” Morgan tries again.

“Reading,” Ed says, cutting him off. “Not listening. You can be judgy after you meet him.”

Morgan sighs but gets up. “Okay. If you ever—”

“Reading,” Ed says again.

Raising his hands in surrender, Morgan gets up, though he does pause in the aisle before he goes back to his own seat. “We’re here, you know. If you need us.”

What he _needs_ is for his coworkers to stop trying to barge in on his life. He _needs_ to find a way home. He _needs_ to get back to Al.

But he can’t have any of that. Not yet. It’s starting to look like maybe not ever. In their lieu, he needs Roy. He needs Roy’s strength, his pragmatism, his understanding, and his warmth. Most of all, he needs Roy’s love. Ed might like his team, but he doesn’t need them. He won’t let himself need them. Because if he did and then found a way home, he’d miss them.

He ignores the voice in the back of his head that sounds like Truth and says that it’s probably already too late for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted as a series of drabbles on my Tumblr, but grew into something else. This section of the story is complete and will be posted probably every few days until it is all up. It has been edited to make a more cohesive story and smooth out some continuity issues I didn't bother cleaning up when it was more a self-indulgent exercise than an actual story. I've gone over it a lot, but if you find any inconsistencies, please let me know!


	2. Preparing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s never exactly occurred to Ed before because he keeps Roy away from his own team, but they don’t do social things together in this world.

It’s never exactly occurred to Ed before because he keeps Roy away from his own team, but they don’t do social things together in this world. They don’t invite people into their home. He knows that Roy often goes out and spends time with the teachers from work and that he’s friendly with them, maybe even friends with them, but they don’t share their social lives. When they’re together, they tend to focus on one another to the exclusion of any other person.

Ed honestly doesn’t remember if that’s how they were when they started dating in Amestris. He doesn’t _think_ so, because Ed and Al knew Roy’s team, and Roy’s team knew everyone important to Ed and Al, so there was healthy overlap there. He doesn’t remember if they started ignoring everyone else when they got to spend time together—but it wouldn’t have surprised him, exactly.

They’re pulling the ham out of the oven, getting ready to put finishing touches on the sides, probably ten minutes from the first of Ed’s team showing up, and the question spills out of Ed like a broken dam. “Do you keep me away from your work friends because you think they wouldn’t approve?”

Roy sets the pan with the ham on the cool stovetop, then closes the oven door before answering. “Did you?”

Fuck, Ed hates it when he does that. “Not on purpose,” he grumbles, folding his arms. “I just… I knew people wouldn’t like it when I was in school, and they weren’t worth arguing with.”

Roy nods. “As I am teaching high schoolers, I thought it would be… imprudent to show you off,” he admits.

Ed makes a face because, yeah, he knows what he looks like, knows he looks younger than he is, knows their age difference is already a hurdle. He knows Roy would never look at one of his students the way he looks at Ed, knows that their complicated history has a lot to do with the foundations of their relationship. He also knows, with 100% certainty, that Roy would never dare cheat on him, if only because he knows Ed would murder him if he did. None of that would matter if some pretty slip of something accused Roy of being inappropriate and then it came out that Roy’s partner actually _is_ fourteen years younger than him. Ed’s not an idiot. He knows how bad that could be, so he appreciates that Roy is circumspect, even if there’s a part of Ed that would really like to put a public claim on him.

“I work with _profilers_ ,” Ed explains, not needing Roy to ask. “They’re don’t even have a fraction of the picture of our history, and they’re still going to be trying to fit us in their mental puzzles.”

“But you trusted them to come here,” Roy points out.

Part of Ed wants to complain that they didn’t give him much of a choice—and they _didn’t_ , just so he’s clear—but Roy also isn’t wrong. Ed isn’t ashamed of Roy, and even though he understands the rationale behind not telling people about him, even though he made the choice on his own, on some level, it’s always bothered him. On some level, he’s relieved to have Roy out in the open because of all the mistakes Ed’s made in his life—and, _fuck,_ has he made a _lot_ —Roy is not one of them.

Ed isn’t proud of much. He’s not really proud of his intelligence because it’s just something that _is_. It’s part of him. He might be willing to work his ass off, but he knows that when he’s working his ass off, it’s usually on something 99% of people could never understand no matter how hard they worked. He learns things because he likes learning things, because he loves knowledge and because for him, learning has always been as easy as breathing. He feelings about his alchemy will always be tangled up in the horrible decisions he’s made with it, will always be tainted by them, so it’s hard to have pride in that either, even if he hadn’t sacrificed it for Al.

Al is his greatest pride and joy. His greatest mistake put right, made whole. Perfect, wonderful Al who was everything that Ed wasn’t, and if there’s anything Ed might ever consider thanking Truth for, it’s that it gave him the chance to get Al back.

He’s proud of Winry and her brilliance. He’s more proud of her now, since he’s had to cobble together every bit of automail knowledge he’d picked up by sheer osmosis over the years to maintain his own automail in a world where the fact it still works is the only sign of real alchemy Ed or Roy have touched. Her work on his arm and leg are _masterpieces_ , and Ed’s sorry it took him so long to really understand that. They were masterpieces in a world where automail was borderline commonplace—in this world, they are more.

And he’s proud of Roy. Proud of the man he’s become. Proud to call Roy his partner. Roy should never have been hidden away like some dirty little secret, and Ed hadn’t _meant_ to let it happen, not really, but that was the result. He knows that Roy doesn’t blame him, much in the same way that Roy has kept Ed’s existence from his own coworkers. It still _feels_ like he was hiding Roy, not to protect them from a judgmental world that can’t begin to understand what they’ve been through together and why they ended up where they did, but because he was ashamed of their relationship.

 _Nothing_ could be farther from the truth. Ed may not always understand why Roy loves him, but he never, ever takes it for granted, and he sure as hell isn’t _ashamed_ of them. Being with Roy is right, and it’s one decision he has never regretted. In this world, Roy is his one _good_ thing.

Some of what he’s thinking must show on his face because Roy rubs his shoulders, treating both like they’re natural, the way he always does.

“I love you,” Roy says, soft but more solid and certain than the ground Ed is standing on. It’s always been so much easier for Roy to say it than Ed, and it’s just another thing that Ed is eternally grateful for.

“You too,” Ed says, putting his flesh hand over Roy’s right to still it before turning Roy’s wrist so he can see the array tattooed on Roy’s wrist—a partner to the one on his own. “More than I can say.” He places a kiss on the tattoo before turning to face Roy.

Roy smiles that particular joyous smile that reminds Ed of a full moon in a twilight summer sky as the fireflies come out for the first time. It’s wonder and awe and could make even Ed believe in magic—if only for a few minutes. If Ed is really truly proud of one thing he’s done, one thing that is all his and his alone—it’s that smile. He has it on good authority that Roy didn’t have it before him.

They lean toward each other, pulled together like opposing charges, and kiss. Ed has looked up the words for _kiss_ in dozens of languages, but they all feel inadequate to describe the way Roy kisses, which is less like a kiss and more like a caress. When Roy kisses him like this, it feels like worship, and Ed wants nothing more than to drown in it, be consumed by it.

The doorbell rings. Ed feels Roy smile against his lips, and they slowly pull apart, but not before a final lingering caress.

Ed groans and rests his forehead in the bend of Roy’s neck. “Are you sure we can’t pretend we’re not home?” he complains.

He feels Roy’s chuckle against his face as much as hear it as Roy reaches under his ponytail to rub at the back of his neck for a moment. “I believe they will just try again later,” he says with a thread of laughter in his voice.

The doorbell rings again, and Ed forces himself to step away from Roy, even though all he wants to do his drag him upstairs and let Roy worship him some more. “Hold your fucking horses! I’m coming,” he yells down the hall. He leans up and steals one last hard kiss, a promise for later, then goes to open the door before he decides to let them stand there all night in favor of other activities.


	3. The "Worse-Than" List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first case they get after Ed joins the team, Dave sincerely considers leaving him at home with Penelope.

The first case they get after Ed joins the team, Dave sincerely considers leaving him at home with Penelope. It’s a sadist, one who likes to carve his victims alive, likes to hear them scream, gets off on it—literally. The crime scene is one that makes Dave have to play the “Worse Than” game.

It’s a game he knows all of the BAU play, at least after they’ve been on the team for so long. You build up a compendium of the most terrible things you’ve seen people do to each other. After a certain point, if you stay with the job for long enough and don’t crack, your internal library has a reference of things you’ve seen that are “worse than” whatever this week’s sicko is up to. When you’ve been doing it as long as Dave has, there’s not a lot that is new or that can trump the horrors that have become classic reference points in his mind.

This one can’t… but it’s a top ten-er. If Dave had been hoping to ease Ed into the job, this would definitely not have been his pick of cases. He can tell that this going to belong on top of a “worse than” list for some of the techs. The BAU are too seasoned to do more than sigh and groan and be disgusted at humanity’s depravities.

And then there’s Ed. Ed is, if anything, even less impressed than the rest of the BAU. If Dave were judging, he’d say that this doesn’t crack Ed’s top twenty, much less vie for top spot. He wanders around the scene with care, like he’s as seasoned as the rest of the team, not on his first case. He views the victim with an air of resignation, like he’s not even surprised at what people can do to each other anymore.

His professionalism and apparent lack of horror has gotten him attention from both the team and the local LEOs, who are now looking at Dave like _who is this kid_? Dave figures that Reid used to get a lot of looks like that. He makes a mental note to ask him later.

Ed is seemingly oblivious to the attention he’s garnered. No, Dave decides. He’s not oblivious, he’s just used to ignoring it. Dave isn’t sure if it’s his appearance—Ed _is_ striking—or his intelligence that usually draws people’s attention to him, but he’s used to it.

Dave wanders over to where Ed is crouched next to the body, looking at something intently. He’s only tempted to crouch next to Ed for a heartbeat before his knees remind him he’s not a twentysomething anymore. Instead he asks, “What do you see?”

“Someone who thinks he’s an artist,” Ed says. There’s disgust there, and a unique flavor of _tired_ that Dave has really only encountered in people who have seen too much of the worst of humanity. It’s not a tone he expects in someone as young as Ed. “You see this?” He points to a long, jagged cut. “She moved and the knife slipped. This”—He motions to the bruise that hadn’t had time to fully set in before she was killed around her eye.—“He backhanded her for it, then tried to clean up the edges.”

Frowning, Dave does crouch down—knees complaining loudly—to get a better look at what Ed’s seeing. With Ed’s explanation, the pattern of damage jumps out. The symmetry of the carving was disrupted, and it doesn’t look like their unsub was able to correct it to his satisfaction. Which is why this scene is so much worse than his previous victims—he went into a rage when she ruined his “art.”

He recruited Ed because Ed was brilliant, but it’s still a detail he wouldn’t have expected a rookie to see. It could have easily been lost among the other stab wounds and all the blood, but Ed saw it right away.

“Why backhand her then escalate?” JJ asks.

Ed sighs. “She hyperventilated,” he says. “She was crying so hard, he couldn’t keep her still, and here,” he points to another set of lines almost lost in all the stab wounds. “He went off again. You can tell this is the one that makes it impossible to fix, because there’s no trying to correct it, like here.” He points back to the original lines. He stands up. “He’s going to have to replace her, and replace her soon. He won’t plan as well, be nearly as careful taking her.” He looks down at the victim thoughtfully as Dave gets back to his feet, legs and back cracking ominously.

“I concur,” Reid says. “The art is incomplete. He’ll be compelled to find another canvas.”

“Then we’ll have to catch him when he does,” Hotch says, having wandered over to them after taking the room in.

“Does she have a sister?” Ed asks in a logic leap that Dave will learn to both admire and dread in the coming years.

She does have a sister, and their unsub did target her. It’s Ed’s first case, and he’s the one who puts the fatal bullet in the unsub to save their victim. Despite his world-weary airs, Dave watches Ed closely over the next weeks and months, waiting for a breakdown, for it to hit him that he’s taken a human life. Everyone deals with it differently, but everyone, except the sociopaths, have to deal with it sooner or later.

Ed never does.

Ed is not a sociopath.

It takes Dave an embarrassingly long time to realize the obvious reason why: Ed has killed before.

Dave doesn’t ask. He should, he knows, but he doesn’t. Just like he doesn’t ask what terrible things Ed has seen that populate his “Worse Than” library. Ed, for all that he seemed a relatively normal college kid when Dave met him, has seen things that make him take BAU cases in stride. It’s an asset to the job, but it does keep Dave up at nights sometimes, wondering if he’d done the right thing bringing Ed into a world that can only be a reminder of the things he’s seen that are “Worse Than.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's close enough to midnight to be Tuesday. Enjoy! 
> 
> Fun fact--this chapter was called "First Times" in my draft, but I thought that'd be a bit bait-and-switchy. Next chapter the BAU meet Roy. Expect it Saturday.


	4. Meeting Mustang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek isn’t sure what he expected Ed’s partner to be like, but Roy Mustang isn’t it.

Derek isn’t sure what he expected Ed’s partner to be like, but Roy Mustang isn’t it. He is definitely the fourteen years older that Ed attested to—as evidenced by the salt beginning to pepper the area around his temples—which puts him just shy of forty. Derek _knew_ the math before coming, but seeing the start of that dignified gray in Mustang’s black hair really brings it home.

It bothers Derek. He shouldn’t be surprised it bothers him, that seeing Ed and Mustang standing next to each other, Ed looking younger than he is, and Roy so obviously a grown _man_ , it hits Derek in that place that always twists when they’re dealing with people who abuse their power over kids. He knows that Ed isn’t a kid, but there’s an energy to them, a synchronicity that only couples who have been involved for a long time have. JJ and Will have only recently developed it, despite how long they’ve been together. He and Spencer have it, but it’s by virtue of their work synergy carrying over naturally to their personal lives. They wouldn’t have it yet if they hadn’t worked together so closely for over a decade. 

Ed is twenty-four.

The chatter is polite nothings as the island is laid out buffet-style, and everyone helps themselves before winding their way into the backyard where a new-looking set of picnic tables have been set up. But Derek has been watching Mustang, watching the way he and Ed move around each other, the way they _touch_. It’s nothing obvious, unless you’re a profiler, but Mustang is… handsy. He touches Ed, _a lot_ : a hand on Ed’s hip as he reaches around him, he leans in subtly when Ed passes as if to breathe in his scent, his fingers brush Ed seemingly whenever they’re in arm’s length of each other. He’s usually _in_ Ed’s personal space, which is something Ed doesn’t typically allow.

Ed doesn’t touch. Before today, Derek would have said that Ed doesn’t _like_ being touched either. He doesn’t shake hands, he tries to stay out of everyone’s arm’s reach, and he looks like a deer in headlights if someone tries to _hug_ him, although he will make exceptions for kids. There could be a lot of reasons for that, but most of them are range from “not good” to “extremely traumatic” so the team doesn’t push it. But here, in his home, Ed lets Mustang touch him. He all but leans into it, as if chasing the connection each time Mustang pulls away. There’s something softer, less guarded about Ed when he’s around Mustang. Derek should find it a relief to know that Ed has someone who he _does_ let his guard down around, but that it’s someone like _Mustang_ just seems wrong to Derek.

Mustang is suave, full of that lazy charisma that probably meant he never had a hard time finding a date. He’s got a politician’s meaningless smile for everyone except for Ed. Maybe they wouldn’t have noticed it if they didn’t have the contrast available right there in front of them, but there it is, and all of the BAU can see it. He’s confident, intelligent, bordering on arrogant, and he screams ex-military.

Derek has never taken Ed to be the type of person moved by a merely pretty face. He supposes Mustang’s intelligence could be a draw, he doesn’t see how Ed got past the ex-military piece. Ed _hates_ organized military, something which has been a borderline liability on a couple of cases now. But as much as he hates it, Ed has a deep insight into military culture and mindsets that makes Derek sure that Ed’s father must have been in the military. Ed’s outright refusal to do anything but spout venom on the rare occasion his father comes up only reinforces that opinion. 

Maybe Ed met Mustang through his father?

The thought does not make the whole arrangement any better, given what little they know. 

Fortunately Derek doesn’t have to break the ice as they’re eating; JJ starts. She’s the one who is closest to Ed on the team, so she’s the one most likely to ask. 

“So Mr. Mustang—”

“Roy,” he interrupts with a smile guaranteed to lower inhibitions at ten paces. Derek feels Spencer squeeze his thigh reassuringly beneath the table, and Derek consciously loosens the grip on his fork. “Mr. Mustang is reserved for my students.”

Her eyebrows raise at the volunteered information. “So you’re a teacher?” she asks.

He smiles, that smooth, meaningless grin, and says, “High school chemistry.”

The tension at the table rises a bit, and the team are trying not to trade sly looks.

“No, he was never _my_ teacher,” Ed says with that tone that he uses when he wants you to know _exactly_ how stupid he thinks you’re being.

Derek doesn’t think it’s a lie, but he can’t be sure. Ed is a frighteningly good liar when he has to be, and he is particularly good at lying by treating someone like an idiot. Judging by the subtle looks going around the table, Derek’s not the only one who can’t quite bring himself to accept it at face value.

Garcia decides to dive in, which is best, because next to JJ, Ed is closest to Penelope. “So how did you two meet?” she asks, perfectly without judgment, in that tone that says _gimme the details_.

“I passed through his hometown doing some recruiting when I was with the military,” Mustang says with that empty smile. There’s no way to tell if he’s telling the truth or not; he’s too good of a liar for them to get a bead on with this little exposure. All they have is instinct, and Derek’s instincts tell him that it’s a half truth, not a whole truth. It’s enough truth not to be a lie, but he’s left out critical details. “We met again some years later, and found, despite our ages, we were… quite compatible.” He looks at Ed when he says the last part, and the emotion in his eyes is deep and sincere. Ed rolls his eyes like Mustang is being overbearing, but a small smile tugs at the corner of his lips, so it’s affectation.

Spencer pounces on the opening he’s left. “How long have you been seeing one another?” he asks. “You live together, so it must have been a while. Your home is very nice, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Mustang says. He opens his mouth to probably tell them more lies when Ed interrupts him.

“I told you,” he says, waiting a beat, then adding, “Profilers.”

He glances down at Ed, frowning. A conversation passes in quick looks and small gestures. Ed must win because Mustang sighs, all the lazy arrogance seeping out of him like a plug has been pulled.

“If we’re going to do this, I’m getting the good stuff,” he says, managing to gracefully extract himself from where he’s seated between Penelope and Ed.

“I told you,” Ed calls after him as he gets to the door.

“You did,” Mustang calls back, and he sounds irritated. He’s only gone for a minute before he comes back with a bottle of expensive aged whiskey, one glass, and a stack of red Solo cups. “It would be a crime to drink this”—He unscrews the lid and begins to pour his own glass.—“out of a plastic cup, but we don’t have a plethora of other alternatives.”

Rossi raises a finger indicating he’d like some, and so does Hotch.

“We’re not going to like this conversation, are we?” JJ asks, raising her own finger.

“I make a habit of pulling out my best liquor for innocuous conversations,” Mustang replies cattily. It’s a strangely petulant tone to come from such a dignified-looking man, but Derek feels like Mustang must be showing his true self to them for the first time. The top cup had ice, and he divvies it up between the cups and his glass before he pours the requested drinks, passes them around. Host duties complete, he swirls his drink in the glass, then tosses it back like a pro.

Ed puts a hand on Mustang’s when he reaches for the bottle again. Their eyes meet, and things pass between them that Derek can’t read.

“I’m not sorry,” Ed says, but it’s gentle, softening the blow.

Mustang lifts his glass and presses it to his forehead, closing his eyes. “I know,” he says. There is a weight, a gravitas behind the acknowledgement that Derek doesn’t pretend he can understand, but it makes Spencer tangle their fingers under the table. “I sometimes wish you would have waited though.”

Ed trails his fingers over the back of Mustang’s hand, and Derek notices some sort of scar there. It’s round, looks oddly deliberate. Scarification? On a military man?

“I don’t,” Ed replies simply as Mustang turns his hand to lace their fingers together, unashamed and unembarrassed by the intimacy. Something passes between them again, and Derek is again struck by their connection. They are long past the need to talk to communicate.

That realization means that when Ed says, “I was sixteen,” Derek isn’t surprised. He doesn’t think any of the others are either. Ed takes a deep, shaky breath, eyes locked on Mustang as though if he looks away, Mustang will vanish. “I was sixteen when I told Roy I love him.”

Part of Derek wants to flip the table, stand up and yell, beat the hell out of Mustang because it doesn’t matter if Ed made the first move, he was a _child_ , and he simply couldn’t have been mature enough to make that call. Except…

Except the way Mustang bows his head, leans toward Ed, meets him halfway until their foreheads are pressed together—it’s not a casual touch. They are bearing themselves, letting the team see what they are together, how they are together, letting them see that this is no shallow, passing fancy. This is a relationship that is deep and strong and it is one that will endure. They’ve been together for eight years, a full third of Ed’s life. Derek wants to be angry, but it feels wrong to be allowed to see them like this, as if he’s some kind of voyeur.

Somehow, he doesn’t think they’d understand anything less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I tell you how insanely amazing you lovely readers are? How utterly flattering it is to have this much feed back and kudos and subscriptions (which ya'll can't see but nearly _one hundred_ people get notified when I update this crazy thing that started as a stupid "how would the BAU react to RoyEd?" plot bunny)? Guys, the _sidefic_ is about to pass my completed 70k monster for kudos (mostly dead fandom, but not the point). All of this on _three_ posted chapters. 
> 
> In thanks, you're getting a double update today. I'll be posting the next chapter of the Impressions sidefic shortly.


	5. Concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rest of dinner is… awkward.

The rest of dinner is… awkward. Roy is relieved that the food is really good, so there’s that distraction at least. Ed and Penelope eventually manage to pull everyone into conversation that isn’t quite so stilted and odd, but Roy feels hard eyes on him throughout the meal. He ignores them, of course, but he feels them.

Roy can’t decide if being able to explain their past, their history together, would make things better or worse. He’s leaning toward worse just because this group deals with some of the worst humanity has to offer, and the fact that Roy has known Ed since he was eleven isn’t going to go over any better than learning Ed confessed at sixteen.

That confession is seared into Roy’s mind, the same way the destruction of Ishval is. Ed had asked for a couple minutes alone before they went off to try to kill a god and save their country. Before they went off to probably die. Roy hadn’t been sure what Ed wanted, but he never expected a love confession.

He’s leaning on the deck railing, beer in hand, watching Ed and most of the BAU team playing an impromptu round of volleyball with Rossi and Reid sitting at the picnic table teasing and keeping score. The fact that Ed is there and alive and as whole as Roy has ever known him to be is a blessing he doesn’t think he’ll ever take for granted. Watching Ed, open and laughing, comfortable in his own skin, it’s almost hard to reconcile him with the child soldier he’d been. The young man who had taken him aside before they went off to battle to tell him, _I’m in love with you_.

Roy knew that Ed was attracted to him on some level, just in that general way that he tried to always be aware of when people were attracted to him. At the same time, he had been trying very hard not to notice that Ed’s body had been catching up to the maturity of his mind. Roy had a weakness for beautiful things, and even upon first meeting, he’d known that Ed would one day be beautiful. Ignoring Ed as that potential manifested had been… challenging. If all he’d been was beautiful, Roy could have enjoyed it from a distance and never let it interfere in their relationship.

But Ed wasn’t just beautiful; he was brilliant beyond Roy’s true comprehension, and if Roy had a weakness for beauty, it was nothing compared to his weakness for intelligence, for competence. Beyond that, Ed embodied so many qualities Roy not just respected and admired—his drive, his selflessness, his need to do better, _be better_ —they resonated with him on a profound level. Simply put, if Ed had been anyone other than Ed, he would have been irresistible to Roy.

That was _before_ Ed confessed. Once he did that, Roy’s stalwart determination _not to notice_ what Ed was becoming, how much Roy would like to see if there could be more, had crashed down around him. He’d known Ed when he had still been… not a child—no one who had been through what Ed had could truly be considered a child, and that was _before_ he joined the military— but immature. The Edward Elric who stood before him in his office and looked at him with eyes that held great and terrible knowledge had been a man. Not just a man, either, a man who _knew_ himself. A man who knew the value of a human life, a human soul, the pricelessness and preciousness of human love. When that man told Roy, _I’m in love with you_ , Roy was powerless to resist. The array had been drawn on Roy’s soul without his realization, and those words initiated the reaction.

 _Why are you telling me this?_ he’d asked, unable to fully wrap his head around his own feelings as the things he’d hidden in his own heart stated lighting up like beacons.

_I don’t want any more regrets._

Roy didn’t have to ask for clarity. He’d been in war before, he knew that Ed didn’t want to die and regret not having told him. 

_What do you want from me?_ had been Roy’s next question. He could have said _I’m you’re commanding officer_ , or _I’m a man_ , or _I’m fourteen years older than you are_ , or _You’re only sixteen_ , but he didn’t. Faced with Edward’s unwavering certainty, any objection he could raise, no matter how valid, felt flimsy.

 _Nothing. I know it puts you in a shitty position. I’m sorry about that. I just… I needed you to know._ There’d been a pause, a silence while Roy searched for anything approaching an appropriate response, but then Ed had rushed on. _I’m sure you wouldn’t look twice at a shrimp like me, and that’s fine. I don’t expect anything, really. I can’t… I’ve known how I felt for a while. But as long as Al… as long as Al’s not whole, I can’t do anything, be anything for anyone else, even if there existed some crazy world where someone might want to._

It was the only time Roy can remember Ed calling himself a shrimp. There had been so much _wrong_ in Ed’s rambling that Roy hadn’t known where to start to counter it. They were racing off to what was almost certainly their deaths, and Roy didn’t have time to explain to Ed just how wrong he was about everything, so he did either the best or the worst thing possible in that scenario—he still hasn’t decided if his decision was the right one—and he took Ed’s face into his hands and kissed him to silence him.

“You seem to have some heavy thoughts on your mind,” Will LaMontagne—Ms. Jareau’s husband comes over and leans next to him, shaking him loose from his memories. While he will probably never not be aware of the gap in their ages, it’s become less a factor as years have passed—much to Roy’s relief. He hasn’t thought about Ed’s confession in a while. It’s funny how his memory has replaced Ed’s sixteen-year-old image with the man who stands before him today, as if the man Ed is now was the one who confessed.

Maybe he was.

“I’m used to Ed,” he admits. “But this group… is like him times ten. It’s a little intense. Particularly as they have good reason to dislike me.”

LaMontagne sighs. “He was sixteen,” he says simply.

“Edward would kill God if he stood between Ed and something he loved,” Roy says, and his mouth quirks despite his intentions because he knows Ed has effectively done just that. “I’m a mere man, and probably only a decent one because he wouldn’t accept anything less. Believe me when I tell you, I didn’t stand a chance.”

He wonders idly how this group of hyperobservant people haven’t figured out Ed’s prostheses. Watching Ed in motion is always a pleasure; he has this animal grace that is both untamed yet controlled, and Roy will never get tired of seeing it. Long familiarity also means that he sees the subtle things Ed does to account for his automail: the way that he jumps, putting more pressure on his automail leg to get more power out of it, the way he has to hold back with the automail arm to keep the power in check. To an untrained eye, Ed’s movements are as fluid and natural as any normal full-bodied person, probably more-so than most. Roy knows where to look to see the signs, though.

He can feel LaMontagne looking at him, but he waits for an actual conversation to volunteer any further information.

“I grew up in the South, you know,” LaMontagne starts in that soft drawl of his that is still unfamiliar to Roy’s ear. “I knew a lotta girls who picked their man young. Knew more who went to school for their M.R.S. degree, even a couple who married up for money. I get all of that.”

Roy slides his eyes over to look at LaMontagne. “You don’t get us,” he finishes the implication aloud.

LaMontagne shrugs and give a _what-can-you-do grin_ , and it’s nearly as charming as Roy can be. He can see why Ms. Jareau fell for the man. “Neither do the rest of them. If he _told you_ when he was sixteen, that means you knew each other for a while before that. One might say it’s mighty convenient for him to have told you at the age of consent.”

He doesn’t mean to, but Roy snorts because it’s a happy coincidence that Ed was the age of consent in this world; he was a legal adult in theirs. The fraternization would have been a bigger problem than the age difference, considering what many of the top brass got up to in their spare time. That Ed is male might have been a bit of a novelty though.

“Though most states, including this one, have an age differential in the law—a sixteen-year-old can’t consent, legally speaking, to having intercourse with someone fourteen years older than they are.”

Roy is aware of that. “Are you going to arrest me, officer?” he asks, tired of this game.

LaMontagne is quiet for a minute, so when he asks, “What would Ed do if I tried?” Roy isn’t that surprised.

 _Beat you with his metal fist_ , Roy thinks, and he really shouldn’t encourage that behavior, but he has to admit, it feels good to know that Ed would so fiercely defend him. “Probably best not to find out. I understand that assaulting a police officer is a serious offense.”

The quip earns him an amused snort from LaMontagne.

“I know you will all likely find this difficult, but can you try to just take us as we are?” Roy asks.

“Good men don’t hook up with kids,” LaMontagne tells him.

“I don’t believe I’ve claimed to be a good man,” Roy points out and takes a long draw of the beer he’s been ignoring. “But if it makes you feel better, Edward has always been, and will likely always be, a superior martial artist. At no point in our relationship could I have physically forced him to do a damn thing he didn’t want.” As if anyone can force Ed to do anything he doesn’t want, under any circumstances.

“I saw some Brazilian jiujitsu awards inside. Are they Ed’s?”

“No,” Roy admits. “They’re mine. Ed’s not comfortable touching people he’s not close to, so he can’t attend normal classes, even if his current chaotic schedule allowed it. I started going just to try to keep up with him. Mostly I bring home new things, which he typically picks up and masters far more quickly than I do. I started doing tournaments when Ed joined the BAU. I thought it would just be something to do on the weekends when he was away. It turns out that despite the fact that Ed invariably kicks my ass when we grapple, I’m apparently decently skilled in competition.”

“JJ didn’t tell me Ed does martial arts,” LaMontagne says.

“I’m not sure she knows. Ed has had a few occasions where he’s had to shoot their suspects, but I’m not aware of him getting into any physical altercations.” Which is probably for the best, really. Roy prefers that Ed have enough distance between himself and his suspects to use a gun over his fists, not that Ed isn’t perfectly willing to beat someone under the right circumstances, it would just probably make the automail obvious. “Anyone who decides to pick a fight with Edward will be very sorry they did.”

LaMontagne chuckles softly, and the atmosphere isn’t quite so tense as it was when LaMontagne first found his way over here. After a moment he says, “I still don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to,” Roy says. “If you have any concerns about our current relationship, please feel free to address them to me.”

“And if my concerns are about how your relationship began?”

“Please address those concerns to Edward directly, so he can address them. Just please warn me before you do. I prefer to be out of the blast radius.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I say, for the little we see of him, I really like Will?


	6. Cleaning Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you realize what you’ve done?” Roy asks him.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Roy asks him as they’re cleaning up the last bits of leftovers from Ed’s team.

Ed raises an eyebrow at the teasing tone. “What have I done now?” he asks.

“You went the entire evening without calling me a bastard once.”

Rolling his eyes like it’s meaningless, Ed says, “I know.”

“I rather thought you did,” Roy replies. Of the things that have changed most about Ed in recent years, it’s his deliberation. While Ed’s temper can still be spectacular and Roy is still guilty of occasionally winding him up just because he can, Ed is far more careful about the things he says. Roy doesn’t know if it’s just maturity, losing their whole world, or having so many things he simply _can’t_ talk about that did it—probably some combination of all three—but Ed thinks before he speaks and takes care when he chooses his words. That is even more true after joining the BAU. It has been fascinating to watch Ed’s brilliant mind bend to making sense of people. Fascinating, and a little terrifying. “I think I’m just still in mild disbelief that it’s possible. Outside of tonight, I’m not sure when the last time you went an hour without calling me a bastard.”

He gets a glare for that, and Ed says, “Because you _are_ a bastard.” Roy chuckles, and he’s pretty sure Ed expected him to because he hides a smile before his eyes get solemn. “Tonight was going to be hard enough. If I spent the whole night calling you a bastard… they would have heard what they wanted to hear.”

Roy finishes drying the serving plate in his hand. “Do you think they’re going to pursue it?” he asks seriously, going to put it away.

“Legally?” Ed asks, then shakes his head. “No. They only have our word for it, and since all none of my records really exist until I was almost eighteen, they can’t really _prove_ anything. Besides, I’m not some brat anymore, even if they try to treat me like it. That _doesn’t_ mean I’m not still going to hear about it at work. At least for a while.”

“I have to say, I don’t miss being in a room full of adults who revile me,” Roy says, hoping to get an amused response from Ed.

“They don’t revile you!” A swing and a miss, as they say here. “They just… don’t understand…”

And that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? Roy understands their concerns, their feelings. He even agrees with them mostly. Given what Ed’s seen in his time working with the BAU, he thinks Ed probably agrees with them too.

It’s another thing time has given Ed—perspective on just _how young_ he was. He understands better every day why so many people had reservations when they got involved, why Roy himself struggled with it so much in the aftermath of defeating Father. Through Roy’s stories of his high school students, Ed also understands, probably for the first time, how big of a gap was between him and “normal” teenagers, how little of a childhood he actually had.

College had been the first time Ed had ever spent significant time around people his own age who weren’t his brother or Miss Rockbell. He’d been at turns bemused, baffled, and outraged by the pettiness and how myopic his supposed peers could be. Oh, some had greater maturity and larger understandings of the world, but Ed never really made close friends in college. He simply couldn’t relate to them, so he kept himself busy so he always had an excuse at the ready.

Despite Ed’s best intentions, he’s made friends with his team. He cares about them. They obviously care about him in return or they wouldn’t be so upset and protective.

Roy puts the last dish away, then goes to Ed, wrapping his arms around his waist. Ed’s too tall for him to easily loop his arms over his shoulders like he did when they first got together. He is beyond relieved that Miss Rockbell had the foresight to have Ed’s most recent automail—the last set she’d given him before they got whisked off to this world—adjustable. At the time, it was simply because Ed had been growing so fast, she was replacing it regularly, but it’s the only reason Ed isn’t either lopsided or had to figure out how to reverse-engineer it. Ed isn’t tall, but then, in this world, neither is Roy. At 5’7” he’s the perfect height for Roy to pull him in close and put his chin over his shoulder—usually the flesh one. Automail on the chin doesn’t feel good.

“Even if we could explain, I think they’d find it hard to understand,” he says. Ed sags into him, part silent acknowledgment, part seeking comfort. “Our situation is extremely unique.”

Ed puts rests his hands over Roy’s, and Roy considers it no small victory that Ed touches him with both hands without thought these days. It took years for Ed to stop shying from touching Roy with his automail, no matter how much Roy told him it was simply a part of him. He knows that Ed’s team must think that he doesn’t like to be touched, but it’s so far from the truth.

“I thought I was going to die,” Ed says, not whispering but quiet enough that it doesn’t carry in the house, even if there were anyone else there to hear it.

“I know,” Roy replies, equally soft. He tightens his arms, knowing that Ed _had_ nearly died. Knowing they had all nearly died.

“I don’t regret it,” Ed repeats his words from earlier that evening. It’s something he used to have to remind Roy of a lot. Often enough that someone on the outside might think that Ed is trying to convince himself. But Ed isn’t like that—he doesn’t give platitudes or pity. He tells Roy he doesn’t regret it because he doesn’t and Roy needs the reminder sometimes.

And when it comes down to it, Roy has to admit, “Neither do I.” Because Ed is probably the best thing to ever happen to him. The timing had been difficult, but Roy wouldn’t sacrifice the extra time he got to be with Ed, given the choice. Maybe it makes him a worse man than Roy thinks he is, but if so, he’s bad enough that he can live with it if the reward is Ed.

“Let’s go to bed,” Ed says.

“Let’s,” Roy says, letting a little leer in his voice to try to dispel the melancholy that’s fallen over them. It gets a soft chuckle from Ed, which is what Roy wanted. He lets Ed twine their fingers and tug him up to their room, to their bed.

He may be damned, but Roy cannot find a shred of regret when he has Edward in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's after midnight, so technically it's Saturday. *yawns* I know this one's short, but I hope you enjoyed!


	7. The Abbreviated Kidnapping of Edward Elric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed is missing and the team is pretty frantic, no one more so than Dave himself.

Ed is missing and the team is pretty frantic, no one more so than Dave himself. He’s been missing for over ten hours, Penelope can’t seem to track him down, and they know that he fits the unsub’s type. Ed is smart and he’s strong, but he’s still just one person. He’s young and he hasn’t been in the hands of an unsub before, or anyone as terrible as one.

When the missing clock ticks over to twelve hours, Dave decides it’s time to notify Mustang. None of them _like_ the man, and they don’t like his and Ed’s relationship, but at this point, he’d call Will if it were JJ, would have called Haley for Hotch, so he decides he needs to call Mustang for Ed.

“Hello?” Mustang answers the phone, sounding guarded.

“Mr. Mustang? This is Dave Rossi with the BAU.”

There’s a distinct pause and then Mustang says, “What’s happened to Ed?”

“He’s missing. We believe our unsub has abducted him.”

“Just missing? Not dead?” Mustang asks, and he sounds… relieved?

“This particular unsub likes to… take his time,” Dave admits reluctantly. It’s lucky because it means that he probably won’t kill Ed outright, which gives them time. It’s horrible because, well…

“Oh,” Mustang says, and if he sounded relieved before, now he sounds almost amused. “Well, then, he’ll be fine.”

Dave actually pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at it, even though they’re not facetiming and there’s nothing to look at except Mustang’s name and the Call Connected logo. “Mr. Mustang, this is serious,” he says.

“I understand that,” Mustang replies, but he still sounds amused. “But I wouldn’t stress out about it unless you find blood or pieces of him. If you’re taking bets, my money is on Ed dragging your unsub in and thoroughly pissed off about it.”

“I really don’t think you understand—”

“He must have taken him somewhere off the beaten path… probably off the grid,” Mustang muses. “If it’s far enough away, he may call you and ask to give you Ed back.” He pauses for a second then backtracks. “No, Ed will probably drag him in. It doesn’t seem like the type to be smart enough to realize they’ve been beaten.”

“Mr. Mustang, your lover has been missing for _twelve hours_ and you’re making jokes?”

“I’m perfectly serious, Agent Rossi. If Ed wasn’t killed outright, he’ll find a way out. He will probably be very annoyed by it as well. Have him give me a call when he gets a moment. Thank you for the update,” Mustang says, and then the call dies.

Dave pulls his phone away and stares at the lock screen that has popped back up.

“What did he say?” Morgan asks, frowning.

“He tried to place a bet on Ed dragging the unsub back,” Dave finds himself recounting, still finding it hard to believe how casual Mustang had been about his lover being abducted. 

His phone lights up with Penelope’s contact, and Dave puts it immediately on speakerphone. “What have you got, Garcia?”

“Ed just popped up on a camera coming back into town!” she announces. “LEOs are already on their way to pick him up. It looks like he’s dragging the unsub with him.”

* * *

When they finally meet Ed at the station, he’s a little sunburned, a lot dirty, and even more irritated.

“Sorry,” is the first thing he says when the BAU rush in. “He got the drop on me. I can get you back to his little kill cabin. It’s like five fucking hours into the damn desert, but I can find my way back. His piece-of-shit truck died like two miles outside of town, and I didn’t want to risk leaving him in it, and he decided he wasn’t going to behave, so I just ended up dragging him.”

“Are you okay?” JJ asks.

He’s massaging his right shoulder and stretching his neck, but aside from the dirt and sunburn, he doesn’t _seem_ any worse for being missing for over twelve hours. He’s even still bundled up in his usual layers despite the heat.

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just fucking hate sand. I’ve got it fucking _everywhere_ ,” he complains.

“He didn’t…” Morgan began.

Ed raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t have a chance. He just used shitty standard handcuffs, you know, the kind you can pick in like thirty seconds with a bobby pin? I woke up, broke out of the handcuffs, then knocked him over the head when he came to move me. He might be a little concussed,” he admits a little sheepishly.

“Mustang would like you to call him,” Dave hears himself say a little faintly, throat dry.

“Fuck, why’d you have to tell him? He’s going to be such a bastard about this,” Ed grumbles. “Uh, I think the unsub tossed my phone. I didn’t find it anyway. Mind if I borrow yours?” he asks.

Dave unlocks his phone and flips to the contacts, readying Mustang’s number and handing it over. Ed takes it in his left hand, as he always does, and hits Send.

They all watch in curiosity as the call connects. “Hey,” Ed says. He listens to Mustang for a moment, then grins. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Sand fucking everywhere,” he repeats his earlier complaint. He listens to Mustang for another minute, his grin gentling into a more sincere smile, then a smirk. “You are such an asshole,” he says, but it’s oddly affectionate. “Rossi probably thinks you’re a psycho now.” Whatever Mustang replies makes Ed chuckle. “Anyway, I’m fine. I’ve got to get a new phone, and I’ll call you as soon as I have it.” His eyes soften as he pauses, then he says, “Yeah, you too.” He hangs up and holds Rossi’s phone back out to him. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Rossi says, more than a little confused. “He wasn’t at all worried about you,” he feels the need to point out.

Ed rolls his shoulders like they’re stiff, then leans back on the desk he is sitting on. “He trusts me, that’s all. Did anyone actually take his bet?”

“No,” JJ says, censure in her voice.

Ed shrugs. “Probably for the best,” he says. “How much paperwork do I have to do before I can go back to the hotel and clean up. My contacts are _killing_ me.”

With their unsub in custody and the local LEOs having gotten most of Ed’s statement already, there’s no reason he can’t go back to the hotel. When Dave tell him this, Ed perks up and says, “Great!” hopping down from the desk. “When can we leave?”

Dave shakes his head. He can’t decide what’s stranger—Mustang’s absolute belief that Ed would find a way out, or the fact that Ed shows _no_ signs of trauma from being held captive by an unsub… at all. It’s more like the whole event was a nuisance instead of a very real threat.

He files it away to ask about later, when Ed’s had time to process it more. A voice in the back of his head asks why he thinks this one will be any different when Ed hasn’t shown any trauma responses to any of their cases yet. Dave ignores it and watches Ed’s back as Morgan leads him back to the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired by [this post](https://angelselene.tumblr.com/post/626624155618607104/b-i-beast291-logo-comics-sainatsukino) on Tumblr and I just _could not resist_ having it happen in the Wreckage world. It's officially canon in Wreckage now, by the way. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep this chapter or not, but I love it too much not to. Ed's a lot more toned down in Wreckage on the whole, but he's still a chaos magnet, and being in the BAU hasn't magically erased that tendency.


	8. Perceptions of Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed thinks that Roy sometimes lets himself believe, even if only for a little while, that everything they went through in Amestris is just a dream, a nightmare, and the world they live in now is the real world.

Ed thinks that Roy sometimes lets himself believe, even if only for a little while, that everything they went through in Amestris is just a dream, a nightmare, and the world they live in now is the real world. Anyone rational would tell them that alchemy and homunculi and gods-in-flesh are nothing but fantasy, and they are clearly living in the real world now. Ed doesn’t begrudge him the little lies, the vacations from the reality of what they’ve lived through, the terrible things they’ve done. He doesn’t blame Roy for wanting to forget, even if for a little while, what he did in Ishval, the price of being the Flame Alchemist. As the years in this world add up, the lies become more tempting, more alluring, and Ed can understand the desire to try to embrace the _now_ when it looks like they may never find a way home.

The illusion, the lie is beyond Ed’s ability to believe. He bears two automail limbs, technology he only barely understands, has to _hide_ , and technology that doesn’t exist in this world. He can only think that this world is the only world in dreams where he is whole and has all four limbs. Even after nearly fifteen years with the automail, Ed never really forgets he’s wearing it. It has a weight that his natural limbs don’t. It responds to his thoughts nearly as quickly as his own natural limbs do, but that comfort and responsiveness were hard-earned. And they have their limitations. The biggest is that he can’t feel when someone touches them unless they push hard enough to basically move him. He can see Roy run his fingers over the automail limbs, can register the weight of them, but it’s not the same as feeling skin on skin. Also, even after nearly fifteen years, Ed doesn’t always have their strength under control. He’s left so many bruises on Roy from clinging to him as they’ve made love, he can’t begin to count them. Not just finger-shaped bruises, ones from where his metal heel has dug into Roy’s legs or waist, gripping with unnatural strength. Roy tends to treat them like badges of honor—he enjoys making Ed lose control—but Ed hates marking him on accident.

In Virginia, Roy doesn’t have to be ambitious. He’s embraced being a teacher in a way that Ed had not expected but is relieved to see. Roy’s too tired to try and fix all the things that are broken in this world, and, he figured out quickly, one person, even a president, won’t be able to make the kinds of changes necessary to fix things the way a Fuhrer could in Amestris. For a while, Ed worried that Roy would run himself into the ground trying to find a way to make this world, or at least this country, better, but Roy seems to have accepted it’s simply beyond the scope of someone who didn’t exist in this world before seven years ago.

Part of Ed misses that drive and ambition, but a larger part is relieved that he’s not going to watch Roy work himself into an early grave, at least not here. He’s not going to do things that put him in assassin’s sights.

Sometimes though, the lie—that they’ve always been there, that Amestris is a fantasy and not a reality—shatters like glass, and when it does, the reminders of what they were, and what they’ve seen, and what they’ve done cut all the deeper for the reprieve. On those nights, Ed doesn’t sleep, watching Roy, holding him, soothing him, keeping him from burying himself in a bottle. Roy can’t take sedatives on those nights because, as they learned the hard way, they trap him in nightmares.

Ed has his own nightmares too, but it’s a sad reality that he’s dealt with them for nearly as long as Roy has. In some ways, because Ed has dealt with them since he was so young, he thinks that he’s dealt with them for longer, or maybe he just deals with them better because he learned to deal with them in a child’s body, with an almost-child’s mind. Dealing with them is something that is simply an integral part of him. He’s had nightmares since his mother died, maybe even since his father left. He really doesn’t remember what it was like to not have nightmares, and children can be shockingly resilient. More resilient than an idealistic twentysomething who was turned into a human weapon is, anyway.

So Ed has them, but when he wakes up, he knows they were dreams, knows what he needs to do to shake their influence. Some nights, simply counting Roy’s breaths as he sleeps through Ed’s nightmare, oblivious, is enough to soothe him back into a sound sleep, as though Roy’s mere presence will keep further nightmares at bay. Some nights, he just has to get up and bury himself in work of some kind. And some nights, he goes into the basement and beats the everliving hell out of their gym equipment.

Roy never seems to get angry at his nightmares, the way Ed sometimes does. He just blames himself, spins down a well of depression where he is a terrible human being who doesn’t deserve to live when he’s done so much damage and has no way to alleviate his guilt in this world.

Those nights are thankfully becoming fewer, but they’re all the more potent for their relative rarity. Ed isn’t surprised that they snuck up on Roy after meeting Ed’s team. He knows that some part of Roy, deeply buried most of the time, still gets twisted up with guilt. Not just about being with Ed—though there’s that too—but about the life he feels he dragged Ed into.

The reason Ed is a really good BAU agent is because he was chasing down psychos from the time he was twelve. As strange as it is, he is as experienced as most of his team members. He thinks _that_ , more than being romantically and sexually involved with Ed, makes Roy feels guilty. Guilty about making him a soldier; guilty about putting him in positions to see things that would give seasoned veterans nightmares; guilty about depriving him of a childhood.

Roy forgets that Ed’s childhood ended the moment Truth cracked Ed’s mind open and poured so much knowledge into him, he _still_ can barely grasp it. In Roy’s guilt, he forgets that Ed _needed_ the military. He doesn’t see or can’t admit to himself that Ed would probably have found his way to the military anyway, even if Roy hadn’t recruited him. If that had happened, Ed probably wouldn’t have been under Roy’s protection—however limited it was. When the guilt devours the floor from beneath him, Roy forgets everything he’s done to help Ed, shield him as best he can, love him, support him.

The guilt monster is eating at Roy’s subconscious tonight, making him restless. Ed can’t kill the guilt, can’t erase it from Roy’s mind. All he can do is comfort him. So Ed holds him and soothes him, and most importantly, he will be here when Roy wakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little early tonight (partially I have to go to bed at something vaguely resembling a reasonable time and I love waking up to see ya'll's lovely comments). Buckle up, buttercups. From here on out, the ride gets bumpy.


	9. Knowing Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed knows fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major spoilers for CM Season12 Episode 2 "Sick Day" in this chapter.

Ed knows fire. He’s not Roy, who _knows_ fire. Roy can look at pictures from a scene and tell you the chemical makeup of the accelerants used, the ratios, how hot and how long it burned. He’s better at it than any forensic fire investigator that Ed has ever run across, so Ed sometimes sends Roy pictures of fires and their aftermath to help during cases. He’s never told the team that’s where his fire knowledge comes from, just brushes it off as _some random other thing Ed has read into extensively, really when does he get the time?_ _Geniuses, *sigh.*_

That said, Ed served under the Flame Alchemist for four years, dabbled in fire alchemy if for no other reason than to see if he could one-up Roy in it (the answer is yes and no—yes, because he improved on Roy’s arrays, but no, he doesn’t have the control or nuance with it that Roy had— _has_ , dammit—because manipulating gases is fucking _hard_ , even for Ed). He’s also been as good as married to Roy for almost eight years, and even though Roy doesn’t like talking about it, Ed has picked up more just from using Roy’s off-the-books expertise than he could have if he studied for years.

So, yeah, Ed knows fire. That means that when he arrives at the warehouse in Los Angeles at the same time Morgan is setting down a victim, he knows exactly what he’s running into as he follows Morgan back in. He can hear Francesca Morales, one of their missing kids, yelling desperately for help. He sees JJ, notices she seems stunned and a bit out of it. Morgan goes to grab her, and Ed hears Morgan yell at him as he struggles with JJ— _we have to go! We have to get out of here!_ Ed sees what Morgan has—the barrels with the hazard warnings on them—he knows the time is short.

“Take her! I’ve got Francesca!” Ed yells. Frustration flashes across Morgan’s face, but he can’t drag them both. He makes the right call and bodily hauls a screaming, protesting JJ out while Ed uses his trench—real leather, thank you very much, and a big _fuck you_ to anyone who tries to tell him it’s not professional enough again—as a shield to get to the crying Francesca. He failed to save a little girl once; Francesca Morales’s face is not joining Nina’s in his nightmares.

The heat in the place is intense—it burns the inside of his nose, coats the back of his throat—but he doesn’t have _time_. He grabs the chains holding Francesca to the cot, smells the cotton burn, which means they are heating up in this furnace, and is grateful for Winry’s handiwork both because his automail makes short work of them and because the carbon alloy means his automail isn’t heating up fast enough to burn him badly. He throws the chains off Francesca, picks her up in a bridal carry, and is halfway out when the barrels blow.

Ed has enough experience with explosions to sense when to jump, feels the concussion of the blast hit him. It means that he’s not blown off his feet or thrown because no matter what cartoons show you, a concussion isn’t strong enough to move you in the air any appreciable distance. It’s having your feet grounded and resisting the concussion that will throw you. He lands, the world silent except for the ringing in his ears, but he can see the exit. He also sees the beam falling ahead of him.

Using the strength of his automail leg to propel them forward, he shifts Francesca—she’s got a good grip around his neck—and catches the fiery beam in his automail hand. It’s fucking heavy and the heat from its fire is going to leave burns, but all he needs is a second to toss it behind them, and then they’re out.

As soon as they’re out, Ed realizes he’s coughing and gasping as badly as Francesca, but it’s okay. He has her, and she’s alive, and this is one little girl that Ed didn’t fail. He knows in his head she’s sixteen, knows what he was doing when he was sixteen, but he still looks at her and sees Nina, and her weight is so slight in his arms, he can’t help but think of her as little. When his hearing comes back, she’s hugging him tightly and repeating _Thank you_ in his ear over and over between her coughs and sobs.

“You’re alive,” he tells her, hugging her back as tightly, but not too tight with the automail. “You’ll be safe,” he promises as he carries her over to where the first victim Morgan saved—the unsub’s sister—and Francesca’s brother, Berto are.

“Cheska!” Berto cries in relief, and Ed manages to put Francesca down just in time for Berto to collide with them. Morgan and JJ are close on his heels, but Francesca isn’t letting go of Ed, even as she’s wrapped her free arm tightly around Berto, and it leaves Ed sort of cradling them both. There are sobs and coughs and laughs of relief, and Ed can’t do anything but hold them.

Morgan and JJ stop just a bit away from him, and he knows he’s probably going to get a reprimand later, but they won’t do it in front of the kids. The ambulances are showing up, so he is quick to hand them off to the experts. He and JJ are also checked over—JJ has some fairly serious burns on her hand from when she tried to pick up the bolt cutters. Ed realizes that his glove has been burnt to nothing, sticks his automail hand in his pocket, and accepts the oxygen but refuses to let anyone else look him over any more closely. He can feel the tightness of a burn on his face, but it’s a minor burn, and with basic care, it’ll heal and vanish. The EMTs cluck over them both, somewhere between exasperated with and awed by them.

Morgan hovers protectively, and Ed refuses to let Berto or Francesca out of his sight until their mother shows up. Ed lets JJ explain what happened to Mrs. Morales and is able to reunite her with her children. It’s a tearful reunion, and these are the moments that Ed signed up for the BAU for. These are the moments that make all the monsters and the nightmares worth it. When the Moraleses are bundled up into an ambulance to have the kids checked over thoroughly, JJ stands beside him.

“Thank you,” she says.

Ed glances up at her and raises an eyebrow. They’re the same height, but she’s got heels on. “For what?” he asks.

“For saving Francesca.”

He snorts. “You would have died trying to save her if Morgan hadn’t dragged your scrawny ass out,” he says because it’s true. “I had an unfair advantage.” He pulls his hand out of his pocket. Although neither Morgan nor JJ has asked about it, he’d seen their looks, is pretty sure they saw him catch the beam in the doorway. It’s a minor miracle he’s hidden the automail this long, so finally showing it, admitting to it, is oddly a relief.

JJ squints down at it since the lighting out here is absolute shit. “Is that… a prosthetic?” she asks. They know about the prosthetic leg—he’d hadn’t hidden that when he joined since he’d obtained and been able to use a more world-standard prosthetic for evaluations, but the automail arm stayed hidden thanks to him calling a favor from a friend of a friend he made in college.

“Yeah,” he says, opening and closing it. Without the glove to muffle the sound, he can hear the soft clinking of the joints. He puts the hand back in his pocket. “I’ll explain to everyone later.” He’s not surprised when JJ puts her arm around his shoulder and pulls him close. He puts his flesh arm around her waist and lets his head rest on her shoulder. JJ is scrawny and bony, just like he knew she’d be, but even through the smoke and dust and fire scents clinging to her, there’s something underneath that he can only describe as a _mom_ smell. Clean and soft and warm, and it’s been a _really_ long time since Ed got to be this close to anyone who evokes that sense memory, so he embraces it.

“You did good today,” she says.

“So did you.”

“I—”

“No caveats,” he interrupts.

“She would have died if you hadn’t been here.”

“And if we hadn’t gotten here, they _all_ would have died,” he says. “No ‘what-if’ games, today. No spiraling down the rabbit hole.”

She reaches her other arm across and pulls him closer, hands resting over his automail shoulder, and he’s sure she can feel that it isn’t right, but she just holds him tighter. “I thought we were going to lose you both.”

He sighs, enjoying the touch. “Not gonna get rid of me that easy,” he says, but he squeezes a little tighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the big changes I made in polishing up Wreckage into Nothing Beautiful was pulling out the revolving door of extra agents (Alex Blake, Kate, Luke Alvez). Since Ed joins the team, he effectively fills that role, so there's no need for the revolving door. Thus, Morgan replaces Luke in this scene. 
> 
> Also, I have some [Behind the Scenes](https://angelselene.tumblr.com/post/631601463618093056/nothing-beautiful-update) info on this chapter for anyone who is curious. This is the chapter that effectively the reason Wreckage exists, so it's a very important chapter to me, and I love how it came out.


	10. Coming Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed showers at the hotel before getting on the plane to go home, but he knows that Roy will still smell the smoke and flame on him when he gets there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that earns the M rating. Full warnings in the end notes.

Ed showers at the hotel before getting on the plane to go home, but he knows that Roy will still smell the smoke and flame on him when he gets there. It will take a few washes to get it out of his hair, it would have taken even more to get it out of his clothing, so he just called that a loss and tossed it. He’ll miss the trench—replacing clothing is so much more obnoxious in this world than at home—but there’s no help for it. It means he needs to restock his go-bag, but it’s better than infusing the entire bag with the scent of fire.

It also seeps into all the oil and lubricants in his automail, and nothing short of taking it apart and a thorough cleaning will clear that out. He’s not looking forward to it because he probably needs to detach it to clean and disassemble it as completely as necessary.

Every time he removes his automail, a part of him is afraid it won’t work when he puts it back together, when he puts it back on. There _has_ to be alchemy in this world, or his automail wouldn’t work, but despite both his and Roy’s best attempts, neither have been able to use it. So a part of Ed fears that the alchemy that makes his automail run is some strange carryover, and detaching it will one day break that thin thread.

Honestly, a thorough cleaning and tune-up is overdue anyway. Not that Winry’s automail isn’t durable enough to last for more than eight years if it’s cared for—and Ed has been a _lot_ gentler on it in this world than he ever was in their own—but it’s still more than eight years old and Ed is only a passable mechanic at best. He did take as many mechanical engineering courses as he could when he was at college to help him understand the automail better. His knowledge is still a cobbled-together mess of this world’s understanding of tech, his own understanding of biology, and whatever he can remember from Granny and Winry. He’s a genius, but this was never his passion or his area of interest, and he knows he’s missing pieces.

He makes a promise to the team to tell them at his place the day after tomorrow. They all need a day to recover after the back-to-back. He knows he’s not getting out of it, so he sets it for lunch in the hopes that Roy will not be home. Not because Ed wouldn’t love Roy’s support but because Ed knows how Roy gets when he’s being protective.

It’s so late when he gets home that Roy is asleep. Roy usually waits up for him, no matter how late he is—and it’s stupid as fuck because Roy is not the perpetual-motion machine that Ed is and he needs his damned sleep—but it’s about four in the morning, so even Roy had gone to bed.

Ed is exhausted. He’s more than a little tempted to strip down and just crawl into bed with Roy, let Roy wrap himself around Ed, listen to the steadiness of his heart. But Ed can still smell the smoke and ash that seeped into his automail, and he doesn’t want that smell to seep into Roy’s subconscious while he’s asleep.

He goes to the garage after dropping his bag in the laundry room, lays out everything needed to take the automail apart on a table set aside for just that purpose, starting with the sterile, white sheet. He pulls off his shoes and pants first—starting with the leg because the leg is easier for a lot of reasons, not the least is having two hands to work on it—then strips down to his tanktop. He sits down, braces himself for the lack of sensation that comes with removing one of his limbs, takes off the leg, sets it on the table, and opens the set of tools he’s accumulated just for working on the automail.

Piece by careful piece, Ed take the leg apart, putting each part in a particular place, putting the parts in order, so that when he needs to put it back together, he can simply retrace his steps. Once it’s as disassembled as he can get it, he begins to clean and inspect every piece. He put a lot more stress on the leg in that warehouse than he has in a long time, but Winry’s craftsmanship appears to have held up. There are no buckles or warping, though soot and ash has found its way into tiny crevices and nooks.

Once upon a time, Ed would have found the whole process mind-numbingly boring. These days, he’s learned to let his mind wander as his hands work. He imagines all the ways he can tell his team about the automail, show them, mentally suggests then discards a dozen different reveals. Telling them about Amestris, about being born in another world is, of course, out of the question. Too many of the team are too hyperrational, and he just can’t trust that even if they saw the extent of the automail that they would believe it’s from another world. There’s too good of a chance that someone would jump to the conclusion he was horrifically tortured and the story of being from another world is simply his mind’s way of protecting itself.

He’s been in this world long enough to wonder sometimes if that wasn’t what happened. That he and Roy were somehow victims of some sadist, and they got away and made lives for themselves but made up an incredible story rather than confront the trauma.

The thing that keeps Ed from that slippery slope is that he doesn’t believe that any real trauma could possibly be worse than what he went through with Truth. The pain of his leg being suddenly gone, of realizing that Al was _disintegrating_ , offering his right arm, the memory of the nightmare he created that night.

No. He’s seen a lot of terrible things in his time with the BAU, but he can’t imagine anything any mere human could come up with that could possibly be _more_ traumatic than what he’s been through. Can’t imagine anything that would make the version of it that he remembers _less traumatic_ in contrast. He remembers the surgery. He had to be awake for it, after all.

Ed is confident that there’s no way his mind or Roy’s are twisted enough to come up with what Tucker did to his daughter on their own.

Convincing the BAU of all of that, though? With really no evidence except Ed’s automail? Yeah, that’s gonna be a really hard sell. That means he has to decide what lies to tell them.

After working with them for nearly three years, expecting this conversation to come up at some point, Ed thinks he should know what he’s going to say by now. He doesn’t though, because he keeps changing his mind as their relationships grow. JJ and Morgan almost certainly saw him catch the massive, flaming beam—he can’t just pretend that the automail is a really advanced and articulate prosthetic because it’s clearly _more_.

He’s putting the last pieces of the leg back together when Roy finds him.

“Good morning,” Roy says, his voice that velvety smoothness that usually drags Ed’s mind into the gutter or makes him drag Roy back to bed. Not this morning though. Roy sets a large mug of coffee that’s at least half pure sugar next to Ed’s elbow before leaning down to kiss the top of his head. Ed can tell the moment Roy registers the smell because he pulls back, and all the languid, laziness is gone when he says, “Were you in a _fire_?”

Ed finishes the last screw to reassemble his leg before he says, “Yeah.”

The chair is yanked around and, Roy is suddenly in front of him, crouching to look into Ed’s face, searching with fear in his eyes. He sees Roy find the burns on his face, hates being the one to put that helpless look in Roy’s eyes as his hand rises as if to touch, then pulls back, as if afraid to hurt. “ _Edward_.” He says Ed’s name like a prayer, like a plea. The sound of it is so raw and bordering on broken that Ed thinks it would be less painful if someone stuck their fist in his chest and squeezed his heart. His arms raise of their own accord and pull Roy into him, to bury Roy’s face in his chest, to press his ear to Ed’s heart. Ed knows that he still needs to clean out the arm, that the smell of smoke and fire and ash will be heaviest in it, but Roy needs the sound of Ed’s heart to ground him. Roy’s arms wrap around Ed’s waist like a vise and cling so tight it borders on painful. Ed lets him. He would hold just as tight if his arm weren’t so much stronger than Roy’s natural ones.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m okay. I’m here.”

“You were in a _fire_ ,” Roy says into his chest, and shattered edges of it are sharp enough to draw blood. Ed tightens his own grip a little bit because, _fuck_ , Roy should never, _ever_ sound like that, least of all because of _Ed_.

But he can’t say “I’m sorry.” He can’t promise he won’t do it again. He’s sorry what he did hurts Roy like this, but he will never be sorry for saving Francesca Morales. He will not promise he won’t make the same call in similar circumstances. “I love you,” he says instead, the words that are usually so hard for him to say are strangely easy in the face of Roy’s horror.

To his credit, Roy doesn’t ask him to promise, doesn’t demand he won’t do it again. They have known each other too long and too well for Roy to make those demands, to make Ed lie to him.

Instead, he leans back and up, taking Ed’s face with aching tenderness, and kisses him hard. He plunders and claims Ed’s mouth, reminds him that Ed is his, that his life is not just his own to risk anymore. Exhaustion is pushed back; the need to ground himself, to reaffirm his own life kindling in his chest from Roy’s fervor. Roy plants a knee between Ed’s spread thighs on the chair and pushes forward, wringing a whine from Ed.

Roy breaks the kiss and demands, “I need you,” already working off Ed’s tanktop, hands touching every bit of Ed they can reach while his lips reattach themselves to Ed’s pulse point.

“Yes,” Ed says, already feeling the hickey that Roy is intent on leaving. They’ve always liked marking each other, but they’re both usually careful to keep them in places only they can see. That won’t be the case for this one, and Ed can’t be bothered to be upset about it. He wants the reminder every time he looks in the mirror that he’s not alone, that he has someone else to think of. At least for a little bit. It won’t change his decision the next time, won’t keep him from running into the flames, but maybe it will make sure that he finds a way out.

Roy’s dark eyes bore into him as he’s thrown on the table, leg shoved aside. Roy kisses him again, even as he works Ed’s boxers off. Ed clings to him, enjoys the weight of Roy pressing him down even though the table is hard and unforgiving. He will never admit it to anyone else, but he knows he has a bit of a masochistic streak. He relishes the pain that comes with a good fight, loves the ache of muscles well-used, treasures the bruises Roy sometimes leaves. He finds the pain grounding, a reminder that he’s alive, physical proof of their relationship.

He’s not that surprised when Roy pulls back. He pats the pockets in his cardigan, coming up with a prelubed condom in triumph. 

“Perv,” Ed teases because he can’t resist, even if he knows that Roy tends to keep the lubed condoms in his cardigan precisely _because_ they have a habit of getting into it all over the damn house. Keeping the things in his favorite cardigan’s pockets is more convenient than stashing lube in weird places. Even though they both prefer it bare, the condoms do make for easier cleanup.

Roy’s glare is more searing than the fire had been, and it’s one of molten desire and promise as he somehow makes putting on a condom sexy. Condom seated, Roy takes Ed’s flesh leg and shifts the ankle up to his shoulder as he guides his cock to Ed’s entrance.

He bends forward, forcing Ed’s hips to lift, forcing the leg to stretch as his dick teases Ed’s hole. Ed whines when Roy stops, their lips so close Ed can taste his words.

“I’m going to fuck you open on my cock,” he says, thrusting forward, but pulling back just before he breaches.

“Fuck, _yes_ ,” Ed says, trying to hitch his own hips to force Roy inside. He really has almost no leverage like this, and it is really fucking hot, even if only because it’s Roy and Ed trusts him absolutely.

Roy thrusts forward again, teasing, not penetrating. It makes Ed whine again.

“Fuck me already,” he demands.

“As you wish,” Roy replies, but this time he pushes forward and doesn’t stop till Ed’s body gives way and lets him in.

Ed gasps. They have been fucking regularly— _very regularly_ when Ed’s home for more than a few days at a time—for almost a decade, but that first punch through without prep, especially if it’s been a tense couple of weeks, still steals Ed’s breath. “Need you,” he says, ragged and desperate in the way that tends to make Roy _crazy_. It works like a charm, and Roy buries himself to the hilt, the force of the thrust not far removed from a gut punch. It is exactly what Ed wants, and he arches into it.

“You need me?” Roy asks, pulling out, then thrusting back in _hard_ , carving his way into Ed.

“Fuck, _yes!_ ” Ed yells because that thrust nailed his prostate and he needs _more_.

Roy gives him more. Riding him hard, a hand gripping Ed’s right thigh so hard, it’s going to leave a _lovely_ bruise. That’s okay because Ed really needs to pry his automail hand from Roy’s shoulder because it’s taking _way_ too much thought to keep it from shattering Roy’s collar, and it’s definitely going to leave a mark of his own. Roy’s spare hand reaches between them as his hips speed up, thumb playing over the head of Ed’s cock. The dual sensations are too much, and Ed wrenches his hand away to grasp at the edge of the table above his head. Another breath-stealing thrust timed with a perfect stroke, and Ed is thrown over the edge.

His back arches off the table, body clamping down on Roy so hard that it must borderline on pain, but Roy throws his own head back and moans, “ _Edward_ ,” as he cums, the long, deep, satisfying strokes dissolving into sharp, quick jabs that serve to drag Ed’s own orgasm out. Ed loves the way Roy says his name when he cums—like a prayer, as if Ed is some beloved deity.

Roy’s free hand swipes through the cum on Ed’s stomach, then lifts his hand to feed it to Ed. He accepts it, staring into Roy’s eyes as he all but fellates Roy’s finger. It’s quickly replaced by Roy’s mouth. His tongue thrusts in, as if chasing the taste of Ed from within Ed’s mouth, licking in as if he could recover every drop. That need, that possessiveness, sends a shiver of residual desire down Ed’s spine, but he’s going to need at least a few more minutes before he can get it up again. Roy, at almost forty, is going to need longer.

It’s fine. Ed moves his flesh hand from Roy’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, holding him close, relishing his weight, his presence, kissing him back as if doing so were as necessary as breathing. His breath hitches as Roy slides from his body, and the kisses taper off from being aggressive and claiming to being worshipful and tender.

Roy finally pulls back because that table is cheap and probably won’t take both of their full weight, and more or less falls into the chair, which tells Ed that Roy’s legs are a little wobbly themselves, then has to shift to pull off the condom and shimmy his own pants back up. Ed unclenches his fist from the edge of the table and hears the plastic make a crunching sound that’s not a good sign. Roy just chuckles, as he often does after sex. The dopamine and oxytocin tend make Roy a little giddy, and it’s one thing Ed never teases him for because it’s a gift to see Roy like this.

It does make Ed force himself to sit up and slide off the table, hopping awkwardly to sit on Roy’s lap and kiss him again, as if he can taste the relief and joy when they kiss in these moments. The kisses are lazy and sweet, nothing like the fierce ones earlier, but not poorer or lacking for it. Roy wraps his arms around Ed, hooks his chin over Ed’s flesh shoulder, then breathes him in. Ed almost tries to pull away because he still hasn’t cleaned out his arm and he’s sure that his hair still smells like the fire, but the way Roy clings to him keeps him still.

“I love you,” Roy murmurs into his hair. Ed isn’t sure whether he imagines the catch in Roy’s voice or not.

He rubs Roy’s back with his flesh hand and simply replies, “Me too,” as he lets Roy soak him in and reassure himself that Ed is safe.

Ed renews a promise he has made to himself before.

_I will never intentionally leave you. I will do everything in my power to always come back to you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Rereading it through, I feel like this is an overabundance of caution, but they do have sex with Ed's leg detached, so if that squicks you, you might want to wander over to [FFN ](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13697898/10/Nothing-Beautiful-About-the-Wreckage)for the sex-free version of the chapter.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	11. Automail Revealed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You gonna tell us how you caught a beam that must have weighed a couple hundred pounds with one hand? And why we couldn’t do this at the office?”

JJ is the last to arrive at Ed’s house—not on purpose. Mikey was throwing a fit, and it is just one of those days that getting out of the house is hard. She’s a little surprised when Mustang answers the door because it’s a weekday and she knows he’s a teacher.

Her confusion must show on her face because he says, “I took a sick day.” He steps back to let her in. “They’re in the kitchen.” He’s also wearing a wide-necked V-neck sweater that has a couple odd bruises poking out from it and what looks like a hickey on his collarbone.

_Well, that’s a way to make a statement. Not exactly subtle though._

She wonders why he took a sick day. He has to know about Ed’s arm. Did Mustang not want Ed to say something? Or did he just want to support Ed? She knows Will talked to him about their relationship—Will hadn’t been wholly satisfied with what Mustang told him, but he had to reluctantly agree that however young Ed had been, he wasn’t a child now.

It still smacks of grooming to JJ. Henry is ten. It’s hard to imagine him in a relationship with someone _fourteen years older than he is_ , regardless of being male or female. A thirty-year-old with a sixteen-year-old just feels predatory. But there was no mistaking the tenderness they showed one another last time JJ was here.

She still doesn’t like it. She doesn’t think she’ll ever like it, though she’ll grudgingly admit it’s hard to imagine anyone pushing Ed around. That doesn’t mean that was the case when he was a kid.

The table only seats four, and Penelope and Rossi are seated. Spencer is at a stool at the island, with Morgan at his shoulder. Emily is leaning against the counter, and Ed has the island between him and the rest of the team. He’s wearing a bright red hoodie, has his arms crossed, and his hair is in a high ponytail rather than his usual braid. It’s odd to see him in a color other than black, and it makes him look like a million other college kids, which is _not_ really the impression she’d be going for if she were in his shoes. Then again, Ed just _looks young_. The long golden-yellow hair and the warm tan of his skin scream “surfer dude” even if nothing about his attitude does. He’s also got a hell of a hickey on his throat, which only lends further to the young impression. She wonders if they did it on purpose.

Mustang moves over to lean against the counter behind Ed, picking up a mug.

JJ takes the open seat at the island.

“All right, the gang’s all here,” Derek says. “You gonna tell us how you caught a beam that must have weighed a couple hundred pounds with one hand? And why we couldn’t do this at the office?”

Ed glances over his shoulder at Mustang, who shrugs as if to say _this is your show_. Ed rolls his eyes but turns back to them.

“I didn’t want to do this at the office,” he admits. “Look, you all know I’ve got the leg, right?”

JJ did, but it was easy to forget. Ed doesn’t _move_ like someone with a prosthetic. Emily perks up—Emily had worked with Ed in the past, but only briefly, so she may not have known.

“The leg?” she asks.

Ed leans his head back and sighs. “Okay, even more fun then,” he says.

“Edward has a prosthetic leg,” Rossi explains for him. “Though I’ve never heard you explain how you got it.”

“The same way I lost my arm, okay? Because I was a fucking stupid kid messing around with things I shouldn’t have,” Ed says, and takes the hoodie off.

Part of JJ wondered if she’d imagined what his hand looked like—what little she had seen of it in the poor light looked like something out of a sci-fi novel. Seeing it in the full light of day, it looked more like something out of a fantasy novel—it looked like armor.

There are gasps and curses around the room, because it looks like armor, but Ed moves it like it’s a natural limb. The hand is fully articulated. JJ has never seen a prosthetic like it.

“How heavy is that?” Spencer asks the first question.

“Heavy,” Mustang says. Ed shoots a glare over his shoulder, and JJ realizes that Ed’s shoulders are _built_. He’s usually swathed in layers of clothing that is larger on him. It both makes him look smaller and hides what is clearly an impressive physique.

“How does it work?” JJ can hear the intrigue in Spencer’s voice.

“It’s an experimental prosthetic attached to my nervous system. That’s why it functions mostly like a real limb,” he explains.

“Attached to your _nervous system_?” Spencer asks again. “As in attached _to_ your nerves. How did they even do that? It must have been—”

“Excruciating,” Morgan finishes the thought. Ed shoots him a glare.

“Right,” Spencer picks it back up. “Because raw nerves tend to react to any unknown stimulus as pain…” he trails off.

Ed gives them a flat stare. “Yes, the surgery was terrible,” he says. “And yes, if I remove them, it hurts like a bitch to reattach them.”

“How far up does the arm go?” Emily asks.

“It’s the whole shoulder,” Ed says, but he makes no move to uncover the rest of the arm. 

“How old were you when this happened?” JJ asks, appalled.

“I was eleven.”

“Who does experimental surgery like that on a _kid_?” JJ demands, because Ed was _eleven_. Henry is ten—only a _year younger_ than Ed was, and trying to imagine Ed at that age, imagine him after such an incredible trauma, imagining Henry in his place, throws her emotions into absolute chaos.

Ed looks pained, then glances at Mustang, who looks as at a loss about what to tell her as Ed does.

“JJ…” Ed says.

“And _you_!” she turns on Mustang, not entirely sure when she stood. “How are you okay with this? What are you—”

Ed steps between her and Mustang. “JJ, it has nothing to do with Roy.”

“You were a traumatized _child!_ ” She looks past Ed’s shoulder to glare at Mustang. “How _could you_?” Mustang winces, which just makes her even more angry.

Ed looks over his shoulder again, then grumbles, “Oh, for fuck’s sake. You stayed to help. If you’re going to make things worse, get the hell out of here.”

“I—”

“You didn’t take advantage. Stop being an idiot. I thought we were over this.” He turns his attention back to JJ. “And you stop blaming Roy. He had nothing to do with what happened. He didn’t _groom_ me—so get that nonsense out of your head.” He glances past her and adds, “Heads. Dammit, this is the whole fucking reason I didn’t tell you about Roy for so long.”

“You were a _traumatized_. _Child_ , Edward,” JJ said, trying to make him understand. He _could not_ have made a rational decision about getting involved with Mustang. Mustang must have—

“ _Fucking_ —Stop. Just s _top_. Roy is not at fault. He didn’t groom me. The first three years we knew each other, I’d have sooner punched his smug face in than _listened_ to him—” He cuts himself off abruptly.

Mustang hangs his face and puts his hand over it. “And you said _I_ wasn’t helping…”

“Wait a minute, how long have you known each other?” Derek asks, coming around the island. “If you’ve known him since he lost his arm and leg…”

Mustang’s eyes grow hard. “You had better think very hard before you imply what I think you’re implying.” Something about his voice rings with command and threat. It should have been ridiculous, with him standing there, coffee cup in hand.

It doesn’t _feel_ ridiculous though, and the look she sees in Mustang’s eyes is not the look of a man bluffing.

“Stand the fuck down, Morgan, before I punch you in the face with the metal fist. I don’t want to deal with the paperwork.”

Derek turns his attention to Ed, even as Ed blocks Mustang in the corner. “Ed,” he begins in his most reasonable, soothe-the-victim tone.

“Seriously?” Ed demands, staring. “You’re _seriously_ going to use that voice on me? Dude, you know I can break you in half, right?”

“Ed, I know it’s hard to see—” JJ tries.

“Fucking _hell_. Just fucking drop it! I mean it!” He takes a deep breath and makes a visible effort to make keep his voice reasonable. “Roy didn’t _groom_ me. He didn’t take advantage of me. He’s never hurt me. He never _would_.”

The silence in the room is heavy and pained. Mustang has straightened from his lazy lean and set his coffee mug down on the counter. Somehow, hands empty, he seems like he could be a threat.

Rossi is the one to break it, his relaxed, easy delivery lowering the tension. “Obviously this is not a discussion to have again. Ed, you can see how we would be concerned—”

“I get that you’re concerned. I’m just tired of telling you there’s no reason to be.”

Rossi raises a hand to calm Ed. “It’s been a long couple of weeks. I’m sure we’re all still decompressing from the Los Angeles case. Cases with kids tend to be the most stressful, and we don’t typically have three of our teammates run into a burning building,” he says reasonably.

It should diffuse the situation, except JJ is watching Ed, so she sees him tense at Rossi’s words. She looks past him and sees Mustang go white.

The tension in the room skyrockets as Mustang fumbles for words. It’s like watching a train wreck, seeing Ed turn to look at him, wincing before he even faces Mustang.

“Roy…”

“You ran… _into_ … a _burning building_?” Mustang asks in a stilted way that is part horror and part disbelief.

“You knew I was in a fire—”

“That you were _in_ a fire, not that you _ran into one_. Edward, what were you _thinking_?”

“It was _kids_ ,” Ed says, plaintive, turning to face him fully, braced as if for a blow. “Some psycho had _chained_ kids in a burning building! He was going to burn them alive. Don’t ask me to say sorry for going in there. I won’t!”

“I thought you were past that kind of reckless behavior!”

“I wasn’t being reckless! I know fire! I knew what I was doing!”

“You _don’t_ know fire!” Mustang snarls. “You think you know fire just because you’ve been involved with _me_?”

“Don’t be such an asshole. I didn’t mean it that way—”

“You ran _into a burning building_ , and _I’m_ the asshole?”

“It was _kids_!”

Mustang grabs Ed by the shoulders. “And it’s your damn _life_ , Edward!” The fear and pain and love on Mustang’s face are raw, and getting to see them feels _wrong_. It’s not the look that Will gave her when he said _Of course you ran in there_ , resigned and proud and scared all at once. It’s not the face of someone who understands—it’s the face of someone who is holding his entire world in his hands and is suddenly aware of how close he came to losing it.

Ed raises his hands and shifts Mustang’s arms off his shoulders. “Do you seriously think I don’t know the value of a life?” he asks, cold, something near betrayal thrumming in his voice. “I know better than _anyone_ what a life is worth—”

“That’s the problem, Ed!” Mustang interrupts, pulling his hands free from Ed’s to drop them at his side. “You put the value of _everyone else’s_ life ahead of your own! Your life is not worth _less_ than other people’s!” His jaw tightens for a moment, then he adds in a much more normal voice, “I really thought you were done treating it like it is.” He turns on his heel and walks toward Derek, who all but jumps out of his way as Mustang strides out of the kitchen.

Ed sags against the counter, putting his face in his metal hand, muttering a heartfelt, “ _Fuck_ ,” under his breath.

Meeting Derek’s eyes, JJ finds it difficult to disagree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll are _insane_ for the record. The last chapter got over 500 hits. I know compared to the big guys in the fandom, that's not a lot, but for this insanely niche crossover, it's _a lot_. Especially in like, two days. 
> 
> So yes, you're all insane and wonderful, and I want to let you know how much I appreciate the ridiculous amounts of love you've been showering on this crazy plot bunny of mine. I hope you still love it after this gut-wrenching chapter.


	12. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not the way a child slams a door, with fury and aggression and energy. It’s the slam of a door closed with just a little too much force.

Dave is sure they all wince when a door slams upstairs. It’s not the way a child slams a door, with fury and aggression and energy. It’s the slam of a door closed with just a little too much force. In its wake, the silence stretches, and Dave realizes he’s never, not once, in all the time he’s known Ed, ever seen him look… defeated. Ed hasn’t apologized, and Dave knows he won’t, but this is an argument he’s seen play out among countless cops and their spouses. It’s the worst kind of argument because no one is wrong in it, no one is at fault. There are no right answers here. It’s the reality of being in a field where you put your life on the line—sometimes for a greater good, sometimes for a stranger, sometimes for people who don’t deserve it but it’s still your job to save them if you can.

But Mustang isn’t wrong either—Ed may have saved Francesca Morales’s life, but there’s also a case for a reprimand for putting himself at such risk. As a cop, your life shouldn’t be the only priority, but it should still _be_ a priority. You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself. Part of Dave wants to argue that Ed hasn’t made a habit of putting himself in these types of dangerous situations—and he _hasn’t_ —but the strength of Mustang’s reaction and Ed’s lack of rebuttal tells Dave that just because _he_ hasn’t seen Ed exhibit the kind of passively self-destructive behavior Mustang accused him of, doesn’t mean that Ed doesn’t have a history of it.

He’s been struggling to fit Ed’s relationship in with what he knows of the man because every time he brings it out and looks at it, it just _screams_ grooming.

He mentally lists the points—Mustang knew Ed as a child, met him shortly after whatever traumatic accident cost Ed two of his limbs. The sheer breadth of their age difference, the fact that Mustang made the decision, as a _thirty-year-old man_ to get romantically involved with the _sixteen-year-old with a crush_. It just hits all of his buttons as _wrong. Wrong. Wrong._

While the argument they’ve just witnessed doesn’t change any of those fundamental realities, Dave finally feels like he understands what Ed has been trying to say. No matter how many apparent hallmarks of grooming the relationship appears to have, the profile is flawed. As with most forms of abuse, grooming is, at its core, about power. No matter how much it flies in the face of what all of Dave’s training and experience says, he realizes that Mustang could not have groomed Ed for one simple reason.

Mustang is not the one who has the power in this relationship. The look on his face when he took Ed by the shoulders—that was a look of helplessness. The people with the power in these situations are anything but helpless, and they are certainly not at the mercy of the one they control.

Dave still doesn’t like it, but he hasn’t liked it from the beginning, and it hasn’t changed anything. They are not going to change Ed’s mind about this, and Dave is suddenly not sure they should be trying. It is possible to dislike the situation and still be supportive of a teammate.

Penelope is the one to finally break, and hesitantly asks, “Do… Do you need to go after him?”

Ed sighs heavily and lifts his head out of his hand. “I will in a bit.”

“I thought he was going to hit you for a second,” Prentiss says.

His hand drops and Ed pushes himself off the cabinet with a snort. “Even if he were the type, he wouldn’t dare. He knows I’d hit back.” He shakes his metal fist. “Wanna take bets on who comes out of that fight worse off?”

There’s a pause where there are so many questions hanging in the air that Dave almost expects them to start condensing like rain, but no one knows which one to ask next, which one is the least harmful, most necessary.

“How have you hidden that arm for this long?” Reid asks, and it’s the perfect middle ground.

Ed shrugs, and it’s almost eerie how naturally the shoulder lifts and moves, though in the quiet, unmuffled by the usual layers Ed wears, Dave can hear the soft metallic clinking of parts shifting. “A friend’s sister is doctor down here. She did the physical and agreed not to say anything about the arm on it. Using my own doctor slid through because the leg prosthetic was already on record. When I got fingerprinted, I just went without my arm. Again, because all the paperwork showed I was already cleared, they just fingerprinted my left hand and assumed some special accommodations had been made.”

The rest of the team trades looks because it was a little unnerving how easy that was.

Morgan clears his throat and says, “I’ve seen your leg during the physical tests. Is it a normal prosthetic?”

“I have a normal one, and I know how to walk with one,” Ed says, bending down to pull up the pants leg. It shows armor-looking limb, and it should feel like a costume, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like armor over Ed’s skin, because the leg is nearly the exact same size of Ed’s right leg, in a way that real armor can’t be. Ed taps his socked foot on the floor, and it makes the sound that two very hard materials make when they bang on each other. He drops the pants and straightens. “This is better. Not just because it’s more responsive, but because it’s attached into the nerves directly. It’s enough stimulation that I don’t usually get phantom pains while I’m wearing it.”

“You’ve had these, the whole time you’ve been on the team?” Emily asks.

Ed raises an eyebrow at her, but the look of _you just asked a stupid question_ that usually comes with it is missing, like he doesn’t have the heart to give Emily grief at the moment. “I was eleven when I lost them,” he reminds. There’s no pain when he says it, no lingering sense of longing or loss. He’s lived with it for so long that it’s just a part of him. He’s at peace with what happened, it seems.

“What did Mr. Mustang mean when he said that you thought you knew fire because you’d been involved with him?” Reid asks in that curious, nonjudgmental way he often has.

“I can’t talk about it. It’s from when he was in the military, so I’m not supposed to know either,” Ed says.

“Which branch of the military?” Morgan asks.

Ed gives him a flat look. “I can’t talk about it.”

That’s… rather concerning, actually. Usually ex-military, even the ones involved in really questionable or covert divisions, have a cover to give. Then again, Ed works with Penelope, so he knows that Penelope is going to dig into _any_ answer he tells them.

Dave can see that Morgan wants to dig, so he cuts him off, “And anything you tell us, you know Penelope will verify.”

“She won’t find anything,” Ed says, but he sounds resigned. “I’ll just say that Roy knows fire.”

Reid gets there first. “The details you figure out from fire scenes,” he says.

Ed doesn’t even bother denying it. “I usually send pictures to Roy. He’s the one who knows that shit. I’ve picked up a lot over the years, but no one knows it like he does.”

“And he’s a… chemistry teacher now?” Prentiss asks.

That gets her a roll of the eyes. “He’s not actually a pyro, even if I give him grief for it. Not a pyro like the ones we deal with.”

“He turned white,” JJ says, and it looks like the fact has been turning over in her head and she’s now got pieces coming together. “When he realized you ran into the warehouse. He turned white.”

Hugging his arms to himself and keeping his eyes fixed on the floor, Ed says, “I’m pretty sure me dying in a fire is Roy’s literal worst nightmare. It’s why I didn’t tell him.”

That revelation hangs in the air because, except for maybe Penelope, they all know what that means. It means that Mustang knows how people die in fire, knows what’s it’s like, how horrible it is, has probably seen it. That was what drove the helplessness on his face, the fear. It was the kind of visceral fear that only comes with _understanding_ the danger, the threat.

They say that sailors never become comfortable with the sea, that the longer they sail, the more wary of it they become because the more they understand how truly unpredictable and dangerous it is.

Mustang is a sailor and fire is his sea.

They came here ostensibly to get answers, but all Dave has is more questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Close enough to midnight and waking up to ya'll's lovely comments is like my new favorite thing. Last chapter coming on Tuesday...


	13. Not Apologizing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all of their fights end with someone admitting fault.

The team doesn’t stay long after that. They have questions, but Ed makes it clear he’s done answering. Once everyone leaves, Ed goes upstairs. He knows Roy, knows he’s still going to be stewing, and he can’t apologize, but this isn’t their first fight, and it won’t be their last. Not all of their fights end with someone admitting fault.

He knocks softly on the door before letting himself in. He’s not surprised to find Roy sitting on their bed, hunched over, staring out the window.

“Hey,” he says softly.

Roy flinches but doesn’t reply.

Shit. This is a bad one, then. Roy is really upset.

Their relationship has never been easy or straightforward. They’re both smart and stubborn and headstrong. They’re confident, arrogant even, and it means that even though they love each other, even after nine years of being together, they still butt heads often. Those fights are almost comfortable, usually easing into teasing or banter when one or both of them realizes what they’re doing. But they still hit nerves sometimes. They know each other’s berserk buttons and weak spots well by now, and they’re usually good about avoiding them, but sometimes they still blunder, and those fights are always the worst. They’re longer, and they take the one who blundered apologizing. Roy is, not surprisingly, a lot better at apologizing than Ed is.

This time though, it feels different. Ed’s not sorry. He can’t apologize. He can’t promise he wouldn’t do it again if the same circumstances came up again.

He also can’t stand the icy silence from Roy, so he has to say _something_.

“I—”

“Please leave, Ed.”

 _Leave_? “Leave?” he asks, because the word is echoing around the inside of his mind, and he literally can’t think of any other response. No matter how bad the fight, Roy has never asked him to _leave_ before. It lands like a gut-punch and Ed can barely catch his breath around it.

“I don’t want to see you right now,” Roy says, still staring out the window.

Panic grips Ed’s throat, and he doesn’t think he’s felt like this in years. Surely Roy’s not… there’s no fucking way he’s—

Ed can’t even _think_ the words. The idea of them is too horrible to contemplate because Ed cannot imagine his life without Roy, can’t imagine Roy not being there, and Roy _can’t_ mean what Ed thinks he means. He just _can’t_ because that isn’t a possibility. There is no world in which—

They just _belong_ together, dammit.

He must have made some sort of sound in his throat because Roy sighs. “I’m not breaking up with you, I just don’t want to see you right now.”

Just hearing the words _breaking up with you,_ even though they’re preceded by _not_ , tears a sound that’s part gasp and part sob from Ed’s throat. Roy can’t _do_ this. He can’t draw a line in the sand here. Ed can’t walk away like this. It doesn’t matter how much Roy wants him to leave, Ed would sooner sacrifice another limb than walk out that door right now. He’s too afraid he’ll never get to come back.

Instead he scrambles onto the bed, not stopping until he’s kneeling up behind Roy, arms wrapped around Roy’s shoulders, his head bowed and resting at the nape of Roy’s neck.

“You don’t have to see me,” he chokes out, hugging Roy probably a little too tight.

“Ed…” Roy says, and he sounds _tired_ like Ed hasn’t heard in _years_.

“Please don’t make me say I’m sorry. I’m not. I can’t. She was just a little girl—”

He feels Roy’s chest expand with a sigh. Roy pulls his hands apart and stands up, going to the window, leaving Ed staring at his back. Ed realizes he’s wearing his gloves, and feels his heart sink further. Roy hasn’t worn his gloves in years, not that Ed is aware of anyway. They still produce a spark, and Roy usually has them on him, but they know that alchemy doesn’t work, so except for as an instant match, they’re pretty useless.

Roy raises his arm and snaps. Ed can see the small spark—smaller than sparks flint will usually throw because once that was all Roy needed—but nothing else happens. Roy lowers his hand again, crossing his arms. “I needed to make sure I wasn’t misremembering. There really is no alchemy here,” he says.

Closing his eyes, trying to hold back tears, Ed says, “I know.” He rubs at his left wrist with his metal hand, where the array is tattooed into the skin. The matching one on Roy’s right wrist is easily hidden under long sleeves. A circle that bound their souls in Amestris but has been dormant since they came to this world.

“You _ran into_ a _burning building_ in a world where there is _no alchemy_.”

“I _know_ , okay?” Ed snaps. “Do you think—”

Roy whips around and plants his hands on the bed, leaning into Ed’s space so abruptly, that Ed ends up on his butt trying to back up. “Did you think for even a moment what I would do if one of your precious team had to call me and explain that _you_ had died _in a fire_?”

He hadn’t. There hadn’t been _time_ to think, just act. He’s thinking about it now as Roy’s eyes flay his soul open. In Roy’s eyes, he sees devastation and hopelessness and anguish, and Ed knows. He _knows_. If Roy got that call, he knows _exactly_ what Roy would do. In Roy’s eyes, he sees Roy set fire to their home, sees him simply lay down on Ed’s side of the bed and wait for the flames to devour him. He knows that desperation.

“I _wouldn’t_!” he cries, reaching out for Roy in a desperation of his own, grasping Roy’s arms, his flesh fingers wrapping around Roy’s right wrist, feeling for the tattoo there, hoping for the resonance, finding none. Ed should have known, should have _realized_. He’s pretty sure he knows how mad with grief he’d be if anything happened to Roy in this world, but he forgot that Roy’s love and need for him is just as boundless and consuming. Somehow he just didn’t _think_ what would happen to Roy if anything happened to Ed. It would be _bad_ , no matter what happened, but if Ed died in a _fire_? That would _shatter_ Roy beyond repair. “You have to know,” he says. “You have to know I would do _anything_ in my power to come back to you!”

“But you would run into a fire—”

“ _Not if I didn’t think I could come out!_ ” Ed says, raising his hands to cup Roy’s face. “I love you, you stupid, stubborn bastard. You are going to be stuck with me until we’re old and gross. Do you really think I would ever let a _fire_ keep me from you?”

“There are no guarantees—”

“I know that. You think I _don’t_?” Ed demands, flustered and hurt and knowing that Roy is still _not getting it_. Putting feelings into words has always been hard for Ed, but suddenly, he knows what to say. “I willingly sacrificed my arm for Al, gave up my alchemy for him. I beat a _god_ to death for Amestris. Do you honestly think I would do any less for you? That my love for you isn’t on par with or supersedes how I feel about our country? Isn’t equal to how much I love Al? Do you think I would let death stand between us?”

Anguish pulls at Roy’s features before they harden and his old political mask appears. Ed was never any good at reading that particular blank face, and the years of disuse don’t appear to have weakened it as Roy straightens. “Leave, Fullmetal.” The title is worse than being hit or even impaled. It weighs on his chest like a physical thing. It’s hard to breathe around it because Ed has always hated it and Roy hasn’t called him that name in _years_. Roy turns back to the window, standing at ease, wrists clasped behind his back, putting the distance of soldier and commander between them that they haven’t had in so long. Ed reaches for him—he can’t not—but Roy adds in a weary voice, “I need time and space. Please go.”

Ed’s arm drops. He feels all of twelve again, staring at Mustang’s uniformed back, an unassailable distance between them. He wants to argue, wants to protest. His ribs feel like they’re being crushed under the weight on his chest, and maybe, _maybe_ Ed could make it better if he just… if he could just say _I’m sorry_.

It would be a lie. He’s sorry his decision hurt Roy, but not sorry enough to make promises he knows he won’t keep. Francesca Morales is alive because of the choice Ed made. He can no more regret that than he can regret sacrificing his arm to save Al’s soul, or sacrificing it a second time to restore Roy’s sight. “Okay,” he says, and by some miracle the word comes out in a normal voice despite the knot in his throat. He scoots off the bed, the weight of his automail foot against the wooden floor too loud in the silence. He goes into the closet to grab his spare go-bag. “I’ll, uh, sleep on the couch… till…” _Till we’re okay. Till you want me back. Till we make up or you decide you can’t be with me anymore._ The words die before he can choose one, speak it, give life to it. Roy is the one who knows how to make words a weapon, not Ed. Instead, he goes to the door. He pauses before he leaves, looking over at Roy silhouetted in the light.

“I _love_ you,” Ed says, because he can’t walk out without saying it. The words come easily for the first time, the knot in his throat giving way. “I know I scared you, and I’m sorry for that, but I need you to trust that _you_ are the most important thing to me in this world. Whatever you think of my own self-preservation instincts, please trust me to do anything, _anything_ in my power to come back to you. If there is nothing else you believe in, believe that I love you and I will always come back.”

Roy doesn’t move, so Ed leaves. When he closes the bedroom door, it seems much louder and more final than Roy’s earlier slam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the overwhelming response. It's been truly humbling. 
> 
> I hope you continue on this crazy journey with me through the Wreckage universe, and I hope that you enjoy _When They Pick Through the Wreckage_


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